The new year begins here!
A perfect moment in tiny farming time as the first garlic goes in for next season’s harvest! It’s all Music (that’s the hardneck variety), and for the first time it’s 100% my own seed stock (last year, I had to buy some to add to what was set aside). The new garlic plot should be the best so far, with oats green manure and year old cow manure tilled in. Lynn and Conall dropped by to help. The row set-up is new. Previously, I’d done two double rows per 5′ (1.5m) bed, each double row spaced 6″ (15cm) in-row and between, with about 18″ (46cm) between the doubles. This year, a more intensive approach: five rows with 6″ spacing both ways, in a 4′ (1.2m) bed. What does all that mean? 500 garlic in 4′x50′ instead of 400 in 5′x50′. It should make mulching, watering and weeding that much easier! I tilled up the bed a couple of days ago to allow pushing in the cloves by hand (the moist, clayey soil gets pretty dense this time of year). The rows were marked out (you can just make out the lines in the soil), and we ran a measuring tape down the beds for quick checks on the in-row spacing, ’cause I’m a little concerned with crowding. They were planted about 4″ deep, from both sides, three and two rows, to avoid uncomfortable leaning (the greens machine was a little too narrow!). Afterwards, the beds were raked to fill in the holes. In the pic, there’s a bag of that new mulch, ready to go (although I ended up not spreading it today). The first 2,000 went in in three hours. I’ll add some more, another 500-1,000, a little later on!
Somewhat related posts: • First direct seeding of the year! • Checking on the garlic • All clear… • After the rain… • Spreading grass mulch
WiIling Hands Organic Farm said,
November 7, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
Best site!!
How deep are you planting the cloves? Today was garlic planting for me too. How many pounds do you plant, was trying to do the math on the cloves. I have 100# and that is plenty back breaking enough, smile
Julie
Mike (tfb) said,
November 8, 2007 @ 10:09 am
Hey Julie: We were aiming for 4″ deep (I just added it to the post). This year, I’m up to around 120 lbs so far. The cloves in this season’s crop were huge, on the biggest size bulbs (2″+) , they were averaging around 4 per bulb, in the past I’ve gotten 5 per. Apparently, clove size can vary from year to year, same size bulb, different size cloves.
To get a rough idea of quantity, I do a quick average for the bulb sizes and work out the cloves per pound. This year, when we were trimming them, we separated the bulbs into three sizes: big (over 2″), medium (just under 2″), and…small. It’s not exact, but when you’re handling them, you know how it is, you can feel the sizes, they kinda naturally sort. So for planting, I’ll count the cloves for a sample of the large and medium, like, five pounds of each, then get an average per size. This year, the fat ones were about 4 bulbs to the pound and 4 cloves per bulb, so, 16 cloves per pound (not a lot, huh?!). The mediums were about 25 cloves per lb. So, with them already separated by size, I could roughly figure out how much I needed by weight for a planting mix of large and medium…. I was aiming for 2,500 and that’s now in, and I may add 500 more… Arithmetic to the rescue again! :)