Garlic Planting - Finally!

Today I finally got around to planting my garlic. I have been meaning to for the last 6 weeks, but something else always took a priority over that task. Today I finally had the time and the weather cooperated as well. It hit 61 degrees today, so it was a super pleasant day to be working outside under sunny blue skies.

I started by dividing the garlic bulbs that I saved. I always set aside the two largest bulbs of each variety to use as my planting stock for the next season. Here are three of the "Chesnook Red" cloves. They have such pretty pink papery skins. 

Then I divided my "Russian Red" bulbs. One of the bulbs of this variety that I saved as planting stock, the cloves were actually starting to sprout. They knew I was way behind with my planting! Once I finished with the odoriferous job of dividing up the bulbs into individual cloves, it was time to plant.

I started out by building the new raised planting bed. It is just about 20' long. Then I laid out the cloves on top of the bed and adjusted the spacing until I was happy.

I ended up planting 19 "Chesnook Red" cloves.

And I planted 11 "Russian Red" cloves. Before I stuck each clove in the ground, I added a small helping of bone meal to each hole and worked it in. Then I dropped each clove in, pointed end up, and covered them up

As I was laying our the hoops and remay, Solomon joined me to "help". Everyone was enjoying the unseasonably warm weather.

Eventually I got the hoops set in and the remay fastened down. Now it is just a matter of watching and waiting. I think the garlic will still sprout and grow just fine. My only real concern is that planting the cloves this late will affect the final bulb size of next year's crop. But concern for July's harvest can wait. Today I will enjoy getting this task off of my "to-do" list and soaking in the December sunshine.