Getting focused in the fall to garden can be challenging, but knowing that your garlic is in the ground is worth it. Then you can walk inside for the year and forget about it, till next spring.
I wrote about our garlic harvest back in the summer. I had a lot of garlic to harvest, and the boys were the reason it happened this year. Once we pulled it, we spread it out on our farm tables, undercover, and walked off for a couple of months. And it was just fine once I went up to get it. Garlic is an easy crop – all it needs is to be kept in the shade, with lots of fresh air, and it cures on its own. You want to ensure it doesn’t get rained on, and before the temperatures chill in fall, you want it trimmed and packed up.
Some of the bulbs were very large.
Last week, the boys had 3 days off of school, so I asked them to help me. One weeded the bed, and both brought in new compost to bring the bed back up to level. The other one used our garlic dibbler to make holes, and we got the crop in the ground.The bed we used was a chicken coop up till 2 years ago. It’s awkwardly placed for sure, in the middle of the area, but it grows well.
It’s not a big crop this fall. We only sowed maybe 90 cloves at most.
Alistaire helped me install a quick fence. It isn’t that any animals will eat it, but rather to keep the chickens out of bed. If left to themselves, they will dig it up, so a quick four-foot-high fence tells them to stay out.
This weekend, I will have them help me bring down maple leaves from under the big tree and smother the bed for the winter to protect it from potential snow and freezes.
I have a bit more seed to plant, held back from sales and eating, but overall, I am not planting as much as in years before. I want to condense what I am growing next year.
Garlic sells well, though, so it is worth growing more than we use.
As a homestead, selling seed garlic in the fall can help pay for the other seeds you will plant in spring.
Especially when buying it in store, it’s is running $23 to 24 a pound! I was shocked at the prices this year, it was bad last year, but this is even higher.
And their bulbs? Are the sizes of the medium-small I sell (the ones I apologize for being “small”).
I am also starting this week a number of trays worth of garlic, potted into 4″ pots, that I will sell or trade in spring. It is the same as planting and selling flower bulbs. Other gardeners can plant them in spring, and they are at the same pace as fall planted (you can plant garlic from seed in spring, but it often doesn’t get as big as fall planted does; garlic requires cold weather to grow its biggest potential).
My advice is: Get out this week and plant your garlic! It is time to do it!
~Sarah