Planting Garlic

Sprouted Garlic

I was making beef stew this weekend and wanted to add a clove of garlic.  Unfortunately both of the heads of garlic I had on hand had sprouted.  Most cooks agree that sprouted garlic has a bitter taste so I tossed in a little garlic powder and set the two bulbs aside to plant in the garden. You can plant garlic anytime during the fall but traditionally it is planted on the shortest day of the year which is December 21 this year, also known as the Winter Solstice and the day the Mayan calendar seems to say the world will end. 

Good, wormy composted cow manure and old round bale leavings! Good dirt!

 

It's December 17, but I don't think four days will matter so I cleaned out one of my four foot by four foot box gardens that had held beets earlier in the season to use for the garlic. I dug out chickweed, clover, grass and a big leaved deep rooted weed whose name escapes me.  The bed had become very weedy with this mild fall weather, but I'm glad to report that the dirt was full of worms! 

Eight cloves of garlic spaced about a foot apart.

The garlic bulbs had only four cloves each, but they were nice big cloves and the garlic was one of those large, lightly purple shaded garlics, very pretty really.  I planted the cloves, fat end down with the sprouted top sticking up, making sure to plant them deep enough to cover the sprouted green parts.

Clove of garlic ready to cover with dirt.
 

It's suppose to rain a lot this evening and through out the week, so I didn't bother watering in. The soil was nice and moist.  I confess this garlic was from the local Kroger store and may or may not be well suited to my soil or climate.  You never know for sure where Kroger may have purchased the garlic, and it is definitely not the same size and color and type of garlic you usually get at the Kroger.  Usually I get smaller, white bulbs that are made up of six or more small cloves.  I'm really hoping these grow because I liked the bigger, and what I thought were milder, cloves of this particular type of garlic. Time will tell.