Planting garlic
All the garlic has been planted. In fact, it got planted a while ago, but I haven't told you about it until now.
I planted two varieties of garlic: Italian Red and Persian Star, supplied by McIntyre Farms in Argenta and Crooked Horn Farm in Winlaw, respectively. It wasn't easy to find a local source of seed garlic. There seems to be a huge demand for garlic in the Kootenays and local growers have been running low (thanks in part to the success of the Hills Garlic Festival in New Denver). This is part of the reason I chose to grow garlic next year.
Garlic is generally planted in the fall. Some plant as early as September, while others wait as late as November. I know one serious garlic grower who even now still hasn't planted all the garlic they are planning to before freeze-up. I managed to get all my garlic in the ground by early November.
Here is a photo journal of the process I followed to plant the garlic on one of my plots. This is Ed's garden in Rosemont.
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Ed's garden was planted in a cover crop of rye and red clover (though the rye prevailed) before I began. |
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I spent a while chopping the cover crop down with a scythe. Scything is pretty exhausting if you're out of practice and/or not doing it properly. I think I got better towards the end. |
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I then raked all the cuttings to the edges of the plot. I was saving these cuttings for mulching the garlic later on. |
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I used my 5.5hp rototiller to till beds into the plot, leaving the pathways between them untouched. I chose the bed arrangement that you see based on the contours of the land. For best drainage and least erosion, beds should be made parallel to the slope of the land. After shaping these beds, the resulting garden is slightly terraced. |
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Following tilling I used a garden fork to loosen the soil in the beds more deeply. This task could be sped up somewhat with the use of a broadfork, which is one of my planned future investments. |
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I used a rake to pull the soil out of the pathways and level the beds. Finally I planted the garlic cloves, two staggered rows per bed. This took me well into the evening to complete. |
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A few days later I raked the rye back onto the beds to create a mulch. There are many options for a mulch; many people I know use straw. However, the permaculturist would sooner use the most readily available suitable material, which in my case was the rye that had grown there previously. I didn't have quite enough to cover all the beds, so I experimented in the upper right bed using a combination of leaves and grass cuttings instead. |
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Comments
Question re: mulch
I got my garlic in sometime in October, but I have not mulched the beds. I didn't realize mulching was required for garlic (my garlic advisor didn't mention it). I have a bunch of leaves I could use - no oak, mostly maple. Should I run over them with the mulching lawnmower after applying them - or should I use them at all?
Also, I like the idea of a garlic festival. I wonder if that would fly here? There is some excellent local garlic of which I have acquired some seed stock. I'm telling you, it's killer garlic - nice large cloves, delicious strongish flavour, and well acclimatized to the area. I grew some last year, so I know it takes to my location. But I could have treated it better. This year...
Mulching
Mulching garlic isn't necessary, but most people I know do some kind of mulching. The long-time garlic grower and author of Growing Great Garlic, Ron L. Engeland, emphatically recommends mulching. His favourite mulch is a thick layer of orchard grass cuttings, and his second-favourite choice of mulch is chopped straw. He believes mulching is important because it protects the soil by moderating soil conditions, like temperature, moisture, and light.
At Everdale the year that I was there, instead of a traditional mulch like straw, Gavin chose to undersow a cover crop of rye part-way through its growth – a "living mulch," as it were. However, that proved to be quite a nuisance during harvesting because it got quite out of control, if I recall correctly. The tall ryegrass got tangled in the carrot-digger implement attached to the tractor, which we used to loosen the soil to make harvesting easier. I imagine he would have amended his undersowing strategy the following year.
In any case, I think it's a good idea to protect the soil if you can, and it doesn't have to be anything fancy like straw. I think leaves are fine, and if you can conveniently chop them up, then that's even better (makes it easier for the garlic to push through them).