Gardening · Homesteading · Urban Homesteading

Growing Garlic 🧄 From One Area To The Next

As winter waned, and spring approached, I realized a sad thing:

I had either planted or sold all the garlic from summer of 2024. I had none to take with me, to our new place. The worst part is? I had been thru this before, on our last move. I had planted garlic in the fall of 2017 and left in the spring of 2018, taking none with me.

As I packed I found a tiny bulb of garlic. Little slivers for the cloves, but I figured at least I had something to grow.

In early March, I planted it on a visit out East when we drove our RV to West Virginia. I had found an old broken-down wheelbarrow downat the bottom of our land:

Just add in broken pieces of pottery lying next to it for drainage….

I asked a couple of friends, jokingly, “did you have any of the garlic you bought from me, that you didn’t plant?”

Well…my friend Linda actually did.

Gorgeous. And well preserved still.
It was some of the best I had grown last year. Huge bulbs.

I packed it in my suitcase and flew across the US with it, as I left WashingtonState.

The first day in West Virginia, I walked to the “garden” area in the back yard and saw this:

It had sprouted in the 4 weeks since I had planted it. And survived with no watering, except for the rain.

That made me smile. I went shopping and picked up 2 large containers, and planted the rest I had brought.

Now all the garlic I brought is planted.

The garlic won’t grow as big as fall planted, but it will produce seed for next fall, where I can produce a viable crop next year, to keep my Whidbey Red garlic going! And that was all that matters. To keep it going. And hopefully by next spring the new gardens will be built. And ready to grow as much as I want.

~Sarah