Planting Garlic in the Spring

For the best results, garlic should be planted in the fall for a summer crop the following year.  Late last summer I bought a lovely head of garlic at the local Farmer's market.  My intent was to find a hardneck variety (those work best in our climate) to use as seed and plant in the fall.  I can't pinpoint why exactly I didn't get it planted, but I didn't.  I couldn't bring myself to use it when cooking so it sat on my counter all winter.

That head of garlic was still solid this week, not dried out at all so I decided to plant it.  That's right.  I'm a rebel who plants garlic in the spring.  As it turns out, if you plant garlic in the spring it will grow and produce a head, but since it doesn't have as much time to develop, the clove size will be affected. 

I did this a few years ago and the individual cloves were smaller, but the heads still produced the normal 8+ cloves each.  Those cloves made great seed garlic for the next year's crop.  That is my plan with this head.  I'll harvest the garlic this summer and plant a couple heads' worth of cloves this fall for next year.

Hubz worked up a small corner of the garden and I planted those cloves - 10 total.  I was so glad to get something in the ground this early.  I'll let you see how they turn out come July-August when they're ready to harvest.

Now, if I can only keep the chickens from digging them back up.  How do you keep chickens out of your garden?



I'm linking up with Rural Thursday, Homestead Barn Hop, and The Morristribe's Homestead Blog Carnival.

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