Planting Garlic

Today I planted my garlic cloves. Based on my research, fall is the best time to plant garlic. I had intended to plant the garlic earlier in the month, but I got too busy and the weather was unseasonably warm. Thus, I waited a bit and decided that today's cooler weather was more appropriate for planting.

As I wrote earlier in the year, I went to the farmer's market and purchased several heads of garlic. Throughout the summer, I continued to buy garlic from the farmer's market. Each time I purchased a head of garlic, I would set aside the biggest cloves and I would cook with the smallest cloves. Apparently, the bigger the clove, the better the chance that when planted, it will produce a bigger garlic head. As you can tell from the picture, the garlic cloves at the top are a lot smaller than the ones at the bottom. I also believe that these garlic cloves would do well in Minnesota's weather because the garlic were locally grown by local farmers.

I cleared out one of the raised beds and amended the soil with more manure. I think I planted close to fifty garlic cloves. I wanted to plant more but didn't have room in the raised bed. Oh well, lets see what happens in the spring. I hope I didn't crowd the cloves and gave each enough space to grow. If these garlic cloves are of the hardneck type, and not the softneck type, then I'm looking forward to also harvesting some garlic scapes too (more information about garlic can be found at the following link: http://www.garlic-central.com/varieties.html). How exciting. Another reason why I can't wait until spring.