Woo Hoo The Garlic Is Planted

Gardening, Planting Garlic, Reflections,

It’s hard to believe that a whole year has passed since I last wrote about having the garlic planted. This is something that I blog about each year, mainly so I have a record of when we planted, how much we planted and how the weather was.

If you are curious about how we plant garlic you can check out this post from 2016.

Relying on the 7 day weather forecast it’s always a gamble, but I must say that our plan came together quite nicely this year. It was Wednesday, a week prior to planting, that I looked at the forecast and noted that we had a nice weekend coming up and temperatures were suppose to remain good through the following Wednesday, October, 14. Monday night was supposed to bring rain followed by dry days Tuesday and Wednesday.

It would have been prudent to plan our garlic planting for the weekend, as my husband suggested, but I really wanted to have the kids over for a picnic since I didn’t know when we would have the chance to do that again. We decided to roll the dice and wait to plant until Wednesday. Monday and Tuesday were prep days. On Monday My husband tilled up the ground where we were going to plant and I began splitting the seed bulbs into cloves. We had rain, as predicted, on Monday night, but Tuesday was warm and mostly sunny giving the ground a chance to dry up some. I finished splitting up the bulbs on Tuesday.

It was shortly after 2:00 p.m. on Wednesday when we made our way to the farm to begin planting our 2021 garlic crop and it was right around 5:30 when I said “WOO HOO! the garlic is planted,” followed by a short prayer “Lord please bless our efforts.”

In that 3 1/2 hours we planted nearly 1100 garlic cloves. The soil was moist and loose making for ease of planting, but having to continually chase chickens out of the area, so they didn’t dig up the planted garlic, slowed us down some. We also lost some time when I had to take the boys home after Ranger decided to run though a patch that we already had planted. After all the garlic was in the ground we enclosed the patch with a temporary plastic fence that will deter chickens and dogs and deer that may be wandering in the area.

Today I am even more grateful that we planted the garlic on Wednesday since we had rain again on Wednesday night and on and off on Thursday. Friday and Saturday were dry but the rain started again last night, continues on and off today, and is in the forecast for each day in the 7 day forecast.

It may seem odd but I have begun to think of garlic planting as the beginning of our growing season – almost like the New Year – something to be celebrated. Perhaps next year we’ll have champagne and fireworks. LOL.

For anyone who may be considering growing garlic next year, in northern parts of the world now is the time for planting. Garlic takes about nine months to grow and we try to plant about 6 weeks before the ground freezes. This gives the garlic time for it to establish roots. Ideally the garlic will not sprout green leaves before the freeze comes, but in past years when we have had this happen the garlic did not seem to be damaged by the leaves freezing.

Thanks for reading. 🙂

26 thoughts on “Woo Hoo The Garlic Is Planted”

  1. Pingback: The Garlic is Planted | Don't Eat It! Soap and Skin Care

  2. Good grief Charlie Brown!! 1100 cloves! I have not planted any garlic out for this year at all, on account of the fact that we still have this year’s garlic doing nothing 😦

    Hope you get an excellent crop and you are not flooded by heavy rains.

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    1. HaHa. The most we have planted was about 7500 I think that was 2017. Then our 2018 crop did not do well because largely because of flooding and we had very little left for seed in 2019 so our harvest was small this year. We decided not to sell it this year because most of it was used for seed. Hopefully next year we will be able to supply two small retailers again.

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  4. That’s amazing – 1,100 garlic cloves. You wore me out just reading about it. We are having a lot of rain tonight and tomorrow off/on so if you’re having similar weather, you’ll be all set. That Ranger – his first year to be around for the planting of the garlic.

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    1. We are getting the rain and it’s still in the forecast for Friday night as well. Yes Ranger didn’t understand what we were doing he was just doing what Ranger does. I’m sure he would have helped if he could. LOL!

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      1. Yes rain again tonight and Thursday and Friday. Hope it helps your garlic out. Ranger likes to dig … counter-productive to your hard work. 🙂 Perhaps he thought you you two were having fun digging, so why not him too? Pets – gotta love them.

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  8. Congratulations. Sounds like your planning and prep came together for a job well done. Will the deer dig up the garlic ? Or do they just disturb the ground walking through?

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    1. I’ve never seen the deer dig up the garlic (but can’t say they won’t because the minute I do- they will. LOL) I also have never seen them eat the garlic leaves. It seems they don’t like the scent. You are correct – the biggest threat is them disturbing the cloves by walking/running through.

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  9. Yes! Let’s celebrate the garlic planting next year! I’m glad you share this milestone with us, because I wouldn’t have a clue about anything to do with raising garlic. We do make use of garlic in cooking, though.

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    1. Thanks. We do have a couple of small stores in the area that sell our garlic. Our crop this year was small so we weren’t able to supply them. If this crop does well we should be able to supply them next summer.

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  11. Congratulations on your garlic planting! It is wonderfully easy to grow and stores like a dream. I found a few heads that I missed digging up in the summer and they were showing green sprouts. I divided them into cloves and replanted them like I did successfully last year. Good luck with a good 2021 harvest!

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    1. Thanks. I think the biggest mistake people make is not planting until spring. I have had a lot of people tell me their garlic didn’t develop. We have found that some varieties store longer than others but braided garlic seems to keep the longest. If left in the ground they will just keep on multiplying like daffodils best to dig and split them so you will get individual bulbs. 🙂

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