Time to Plant Garlic

Just because it's September does not mean that planting season is over. I decided to dig in the dirt some more by planting, for the first time, garlic.

I don't know much about the different types of garlic and just buy whatever is available at the store. I love to cook with it, though, so I go through a bulb fairly quickly. Each clove will produce one bulb, so if each one survives, I will have quite a bit of garlic to last me through next fall and winter.

Garlic is planted in the fall for harvesting next summer. They only had one type at the garden center, so I bought the softneck variety pictured above. Hopefully I didn't plant these too early as I have read different instructions on-line from planting after the first to 4-6 weeks before a hard freeze. It is so hard to know when fall temperatures will arrive as our evenings have still been relatively mild, not dipping much below fifty degrees. I planted the bulbs about four inches deep, and I will add additional mulch over the soil this fall to protect them throughout the winter.  Since potatoes should not be planted in the same location for three years, I used this year's potato plot as the location for the garlic. Now, it is just "wait and see" and hopefully Next spring I will see green shoots poking through the earth. Something to which I will be looking forward.