kdwarn: Down In It

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Garlic year three planted

October 10, 2025

This afternoon I planted 64 cloves from the biggest heads harvested mid-summer, timing it to coincide with the advice my mom was handed down to plant during the waning phase of the moon. There are still a few basil plants in the bed that I'm letting go to seed, but thankfully they all happened to not line up with the rows, so I think I got the garlic evenly spaced out. I planted a little shallower than last year, thinking that maybe the failure rate was higher this past year than the year before because I'd planted deeper. We'll see. Once they were in, I covered the bed with a thick layer of dried grass clippings. Weather-wise, it's been cool the last few days - nearly 60 during the day and mid 40s or low 50s at night. Mostly that way for the next week, though will be almost 70 tomorrow. Looks like a good chance of rain for a couple days in the week ahead, so that's good.

Garlic Season Two Complete

July 23, 2025

vegetables, garlic | permalink

Garlic season two began with the planting of 64 cloves, saved from garlic season one. Late last year or early this year I noticed a couple had not come up, and then there were several in the past month that had wilted and I found to have rotted at the stem. That prompted me to harvest them about 10 days earlier (July 5) than I'd planned to (mid July).

Out of 64 planted, I ended up with fewer than expected - 50. That's a decent number and more than last year's 35 or so, but that's a 20% failure rate, double the previous year. I think the ones I lost in late spring and early summer were due to it being much wetter this year than last, but I'm not really sure. I did water them in mid spring when it hadn't rained for while, and I didn't do that last year. At the same time, I think the garlic that did survive has, on average, bigger cloves than last year. Maybe I'll do some reading to improve how I do things next year.

After harvesting the ones that did survive, I tied them together with twine in groups of five, and then hung them over the garden for a couple days. After that, I moved them to the shed, where I placed some hooks in the rafters and then hung them between. They dried there for 16 days, which seems to have been an adequate amount of time.

Eight of the largest heads will be saved for planting the next crop in October, leaving 42. This year I'm going to try to remember to keep track of how long they last us, with an eye towards eventually planting enough to last all year. Though I may have to research how to store them that long.

January 11, 2025. The vegetable garden. In the front of the picture is the 4'x4' raised bed with some of the garlic poking up just a couple inches, through light snow and a screen I placed over it to protect it from being dug up. (I suspect squirrels were burying something.) In the back is a larger enclosed raised bed.

March 22. Vegetable garden, now with a third raised bed opposite the bed behind the garlic. The garlic is just a few inches above the ground, now with no snow or screen. All or nearly all are up.

April 24. Vegetable garden. The garlic is about a foot tall, maybe more.

May 30. Just the garlic bed, looking nice and healthy.

July 5. Harvested garlic. It's in a pile, although tied together in bunches of 5, on the woodchips in front of the door to the fenced-in garden.

July 23. Two bunches of garlic hanging from the rafters of my shed. I had already taken down the rest of the bunches to be cleaned before I remembered to take a picture.

One garlic plant before being cleaned, lying on the plywood floor of my shed next to the bonsai tool I'll clean it with.

One garlic head with the stalk cut off but still with the roots.

One garlic head now fully cleaned - without stalk and roots, and the dirt/outer papery skin rubbed off.

Midway through cleaning. Some cleaned garlic in a woven basket on the left, garlic stalks yet to be cleaned on the right. All on the floor of my shed where I was cleaning them, while sitting on a tiny chair at the opened doors.

The cleaned garlic in a basket. It was surprisingly hefty when I picked it up. I'd guess a bit more than 3 lbs, since I later stored them in an old 3-lb potato bag, and they filled it more than the potatoes had.

Garlic season two planted

October 5, 2024

garlic | permalink

Last year, I planted about 40 garlic cloves. Most survied, except three or four that seemed to be rotting at the neck and that I yanked out at some point. Not sure why that happened. The rest did well, though they could have been larger. After harvesting in July, I set aside the largest ones for replanting in the new bed I made for them. So today, in this new 16-square-foot area, I planted 64 cloves (8 rows of 8). I took a little under an hour, and probably half that time I was just breaking apart the old heads. It went fast; I was catching up with my friend Paul, who was driving to a protest in Cleveland, while I planted.

This year, unlike last year, I covered the top with dried grass clippings after planting. I think I also pushed them into the soil a little deeper - I was shooting for about 3 inches down. I'm looking forward to seeing how they turn out, and if there's any difference in the size compared to last year. Each has slightly more room than those from the previous set. I'm hoping 64 plants will be enough to get us through most of the year, with 8 dedicated for the planting next year. But I actually have no idea how much garlic we go through in a year.

Made raised bed for garlic

September 22, 2024

garlic | permalink

I planted garlic last year in October in the raised bed, and nothing touched it the entire time the raised bed was unfenced, so I decided to make a separate, unfenced bed for it. Another simple project: two 8-feet-long 2x8s, cut in half, and screwed together. The compost pile contributed some rich new dirt, and dirt moved from elsewhere, grass clippings, and excess mulch made up the rest. In a couple weeks, I'll plant some of the cloves from the garlic harvested this summer.

Garlic planted

October 1, 2023

garlic | permalink

I picked up a bag of California Giant garlic and planted it in the raised bed - first thing to go in. Here it is moments before I started pushing the cloves into the dirt:

The timing seems to have worked out well. My mom's advice was to plant during the waning moon (maybe specifically during October, I'm not sure), which was advice they heard from "coach" (Harry Pinge I believe). I think that's what I did, though at the same time I don't think it matters, though I'm open to there being some reason for this existing. I imagine just timing, and so "October 1 or thereabouts"; will do for me in the future.