Planting Garlic

Some people have never planted garlic before.  Six years ago, I was one of them.  It is such and easy crop and uses garden space during the slower parts of the growing season when you have the space.
The first step is to buy good bulbs of garlic from the farmer's market.  Make sure they are not damaged and are nice and firm.  Size will depend on the type you are planting, but the bigger the better.  If your goal is to braid garlic, then you will need a soft neck variety (ask your farmer, he will know).  If you like a bigger bulb, then the hard neck varieties are probably more your speed.  I have hard neck garlic in the photo above.  You will never braid those stiff stems.  I have one bulb broken into the six individual cloves.  The cloves are what you plant.  So, in this case, one bulb should yield six more bulbs if all goes well.

A general rule of thumb for planting bulbs is to plant three times the depth of the bulb.  A one inch high bulb would be planted three inches deep.  My garlic will go in about 4" deep.  I dig a trench, add some compost, put in the clove of garlic (pointy end up), and cover with more compost.  Done!

I mark the ends of my garlic row so I don't start another early season crop there next spring.  I also put down some of my expanded metal squirrel-be-gone deterrents.  If you have ever planted fall bulbs just to have them come and dig them up, this is an effective barrier to keep them out.  I have had mystery bulbs come up in my yard from squirrels re-burying bulbs from the neighbor's yards.  This year I had a bonus canna.  Other years I have had tulips, hyacinths, and one other spring bulb that has multiplied and I still don't know the name of it.

As long as I had the shovel out, I dug a trench on the north side of one of my raised beds and tucked the Alpine strawberries in for winter.  Unless we get a warm stretch, my berry days are done.  I have not covered them in past years and they seem to overwinter just fine.  I choose the north side to reduce the freeze-thaw cycle that the south side of the beds tend to have.  I also chose to not put my garlic in the raised beds this year as last year's mild winter was confusing the garlic into growing so early.  It didn't matter what side it was on as the soil barely froze last winter.
Tomorrow I will get out to clean out the beds and get my snow drops and daffodils in for next spring's bloom.