Thursday morning had heavy frost and a frozen haze over Mt. Warner in the distance. I would not be going out to sit on the cold ground until it warmed up a lot.
The comfrey in the Big garden was flattened and everything was crisp with frost.
First I drew the Small garden plan, to see if all the rows I’d planned would fit into the cleared area. They did, with room to spare.
Then I brought my garlic seed up from the root cellar for grading to plant.
It had cured beautifully and stored well. It is German Extra Hardy that I’ve been growing and selecting for many years.
Having done the garden plan, which includes plant name, spacing and number of plants per row, I knew I needed about 250 cloves. Out of all the bulbs I broke apart, I only got 7 cloves that weren’t planting quality. Three were too small and 1 bulb had not cured properly.
Small garden area with amendment down
My helper friend had finished this area on Tuesday. He thought he might be getting a cold and planned to go home, rest, dose himself with Vitamin C and fire cider, and hope he would miss the cold. He didn’t and so would not be helping plant garlic this week, as he’s pretty sick.
He’d gotten all the leaves up and double checked for growing roots on Tuesday. But the wind had come up since then and I had to rake a packed tote of leaves off before I could start. Then I put down the Small garden amendment mix he and I had made up a couple weeks ago. My son helped me lay out the rows.
It took a while to collect all my materials together. I had the buckets of cloves ready. I put some Espoma BulbTone in a smaller bucket. Each hole gets 1 tablespoon under a drift of soil before the clove is put in.
I had to repair one of my diggers as it had lost a screw. The holes are 6” deep so that means I take out the first amount of soil which is 4” and then take out 2” more. These release diggers work pretty well.
Once the clove is put in, root side down, and the soil tamped firmly over it, I mark the area with a marker, so I know where I can mulch heavily or not.
I plant them 6” apart so I use a tape measure, as I get erratic when tired. This makes sure they have plenty of growing space. The string keeps the rows straight, a bonus when mulching with hay leaves as I was going to be.
The sheet of coated cardboard makes a big difference on how tired I get from sitting on cold or wet ground for hours.
I had this much hay left to mulch the edges of the garden and all the rows. I would be mulching sparingly to make sure I had enough for all.
I got 1 row done and mulched by lunch time. I had another helper coming mid afternoon to plant.
Between the 2 of us, we got 2 more rows done by the time she had to leave. I have not lightly mulched around the bulbs, just put leaves down the rows, away from the bulbs.
Each 31’ row has 61 plants and I’d planned 4 rows for 244 plants. In checking my records for the previous few years, I’d planted a bit more to have to sell. I’m debating about putting in a 5th row, for a total of 305 plants. There’s room, but I’m not sure about mulch… And then there’s the energy problem….
Stay tuned to see what I decided to do…
More info on planting garlic:
https://steemit.com/homesteading/@goldenoakfarm/planting-garlic-november-21-2018-goldenoakfarm