Last year, I successfully planted my first crop of garlic.
You can read about it in “Planting Garlic” and “Warding Off The Vampires“. I love reaching in the cupboard and pulling out some home-grown, delicious tasting garlic. I even have a little terra cotta garlic keeper handy right next to the stove.
This past fall I planted another, bigger, crop. I was a little late in ordering, but was able to get Music, Purple Glazer and Susanville garlic from Territorial Seed Company, as well as French Shallots.
Next to garlic, I love cooking with shallots! I’m still using some of last year’s harvest and looking forward to more.
Music and Purple Glazer are hard-necked varieties and Susanville a soft-necked variety.
Planting season is 6-8 weeks before the likely hard frost date for your area, so I planted mine in mid-October, although this winter that was too early. Can’t plan for crazy weather though.
Last year, I planted in two different locations in the yard, and one was definitely more successful than the other. Not sure why the difference, but this year I stuck to the raised beds in the backyard where I had success last year.
I also planted a bunch more in our new property in Door County, WI. Lucky me–it came with a great raised bed all ready for planting! I’ll talk more about that another time, but I’m excited to have another place to garden and explore.
Before the cold and snow came, I was not surprised that I had green shoots coming up from the softneck Susanville garlic.
Not too worried, the same thing happened last year after planting. I just covered them with a nice layer of mulch and they should be fine.
Can’t wait for the early spring garlic scapes to appear from the hard-necked varieties.
I wasn’t sure what to do with them last year, so they went to waste. Not this year, I’m going have fun experimenting 🙂 In the meantime, I’ll just keep enjoying my harvest from last year. So far, all the stored garlic is just fine!
Are you still using any of your stored garlic? Or trying to grow it for the first time?
At almost 80 heads we are out…we harvested early last year and we use it everyday. I grow mine in raised beds too. And I adore the scapes…you can pickle them, stir fry with them, and even make pesto from them!
Now I’m inspired to make sure that I don’t waste the scapes next spring. You’ll have to tell me how to pickle them, that sounds intriguing. I think garlic is one of my new garden favorites. It is so much better than the grocery store variety