We wanted a lot of garlic this year. We ordered some from Seeds of Change, won some from a dude on eBay, bought some at a farmers' market, and were given some of this house's resident garlic (Music garlic, which has been planted here for years). All together we have:

Georgia Crystal
Russian Giant
Music
Italian
German Extra Hardy
Bogatyr
Chesnok Red
Spanish Roja
Emmaus (some mystery variety we picked up at the Emmaus Farmers' Market)

At the end of the day we had 429 cloves of garlic planted in two and a half nice, composty beds, and covered with a few inches of broken down grass clippings and old straw.

Don't be alarmed by the smoke. We had us a little old-tomato-plant-fire to keep us toasty while we planted.

We planted some of the garlic earlier in the season and just mulched it today. It's already sprouted and has made some good headway so far. The new stuff will probably sprout soon, considering the weirdo temperatures we've been having--it was 70 degrees yesterday and 40 today. Either way, we're going to be eating major amounts of garlic scapes in June and harvesting a boatload of bulbs not too long after that.

The Garlic of Education

Meg and I are always learning something new about the fascinating world of backyard food production. Recently we learned that our steps to planting garlic were a little out of order. Actually the only step that was out of place was when to add mulch. We thought that the mulch was added AFTER the garlic sprouted. This assumption was made because we were under the impression that the mulch would suffocate the garlic and keep them from sprouting. We were wrong.

Many of the garden blogs we read are talking about one of three things: frost/snow, what's in food storage, and planting garlic. While reading Tiny Farm Blog and Her Able Hands I realized that mulching your garlic beds doesn't have to wait for the shoots to show. After sharing this information with Meg we decided that we should gather some straw bales right quick. The shoots are already close to four or five inches tall and were going to be covered next week, but now it is at the top of our to-do list with a bit of fire under our asses.

I don't feel that we are too late; we waited this long last year and ended up harvesting close to 200 bulbs. However, it is a bit of a bother sifting straw between every sprout and if this helps ease the chore than I am all applause.