This past week we were able to get next seasons garlic planted amidst snow flurries and windy, chilly weather. It was the perfect end cap to our 2022 planting season as we are truly done planting for the year now that the garlic is in the ground.
It might surprise you to learn that we plant our garlic in the fall but it actually has several benefits for us. First, planting garlic in the fall yields bigger bulbs of garlic on average. Our 2022 garlic was incredible and many of our CSA members and farmers market customers commented on the size of our garlic. We were impressed too! Second, it frees up some time for us in the spring so we have more time for planting other crops like onions, potatoes and more. Although we are planting all season long spring is when we plant the vast majority of our seeds and transplants so anything we can do to offload some of the burden to a different season is a big gain. Finally, it allows us to use our own garlic as "seed" garlic. We we say seed garlic what we really mean is that we are planting individual cloves from our garlic bulbs which then become new garlic bulbs for us in the coming season. As far as we know, all garlic for culinary purposes is grown from cloves.
After planting garlic we cover it up with a nice think layer of straw mulch and sit back and anticipate our 2023 garlic crop.
