garlic | Renovations & Relationships

We planted our garlic yesterday. Did we make a mistake?!

By many accounts, we could have waited until December 21st to plant our allium sativum; the winter solstice is traditionally known for garlic planting, the summer solstice for garlic harvest. But, I figured, when you live in Vermont and your ground is frozen by December 21st, and you expect you’ll be out of town for the holidays by then, why not just get it in the ground now while you’re thinking of it in mid-October? But I now realize that it also wasn’t the ‘right’ time to plant according to biodynamic planting schedules, moon cycles, or even the farmers’ almanac.

In fact, if I had listened to my body, it too would have told me yesterday wasn’t the right time for planting. You see, I’m slowly recovering from having my final wisdom tooth removed last week, and really, all my body wanted to do yesterday was rest.

But instead of resting we had a full day of yard work and preparing the gardens for winter which consisted of fun things like organizing tomato cages and chicken wire bundles, moving piles of branches and twigs to the street with a “free kindling” sign in front, trimming raspberry bushes, carrying some of the last tomato and pepper plants to the growing compost piles around the yard, and clipping back some of the many shrubs and “weed trees”. We also planted another apple tree, unnamed as of yet, a Honeygold variety that looks beautiful defining the border at the back of our yard, and planned out where we’re going to plant some of the other shrubs we bought earlier this year that have been growing in pots in our mini-nursery in the meantime.

Yes I expect you to "ooh" and "ahh" over my newly organized below-deck garden storage

We also shaped the former tomato beds into new beds for the garlic, raking in rich, earthy, fully-mature black compost to help the bulbs on their underground journey. Deciding to outline the beds with logs for aesthetic and practical reasons prompted an argument between Mark and I about exactly how to place the logs, and ended with the unplanted garlic bed being prematurely watered by some tears (mine, not his). I should have taken this as a sign right then and there that my body was exhausted from the full day and my achey mouth, and postponed the planting. Or maybe it was a sign from the biodynamic gods that it was not an auspicious planting day? But no, we went on with the regularly scheduled planting. Some might say that I am stubborn and unable to relax even under doctor’s orders, others will understand I just had to be outside in the garden on such a beautiful fall day, despite my swollen chipmunk face. Minutes later, hands deep in the rich soil, we forgot about arguing, (or maybe Mark took pity on me) and just enjoyed the present moment of starting new life together.

After putting the garlic to bed, I did the same for myself

In the end, planting the ~100 cloves of garlic took less time than arguing about it, and I slept 12+ hours for recovery last night. And I have no doubt the garlic will forgive us for choosing the “wrong” day to plant it. After all, nature heals all wounds.

My garden journal has a big exclamation point under today’s date: We finally broke ground at the Intervale community garden plots today! A beautiful sunny day in the sixties, we couldn’t help but get ourselves out there for some digging and planting.

Here’s what our plots looked like before we did anything today. Obviously you can’t tell where ours start and end from this photo; it’s more for my own reference I suppose. The bed centered in the photo that is lined with wood and has yellow straw on top is our garlic bed that overwintered.

This is only my second year growing garlic, and I can tell you, the newness of this exciting endeavor hasn’t yet worn off. We planted garlic heads in the fall, covered them with soil and a thick blanket of mulch, and let them sit – all winter long – for nearly six months. It is a worrysome experience: Will they survive? Did I plant them too early? Too late? Did I use enough mulch to protect them from the winter elements? Did I use too much and risk smothering their tender shoots as they reach for the light come spring? These questions fill my mind all winter long, intensified by the fact that we don’t very live close to our community garden to be able to check on them regularly.

And then one spring day my questions are answered. The small green shoots reach out of the straw, stretching as they wake up from winter dormancy. They are alive and beautiful.

As if that weren’t enough, the garden offered other garlic gifts today as well. Garlic that had accidentally not been harvested last summer was growing in other parts of the garden, so we dug them up and planted the tiny heads of garlic today, which can likely be harvested as small garlic bulbs in the fall.

While at the garden for hours today we also turned lots of soil to get ready to plant our root crops. We’ve decided to use the Intervale plots (two adjacent garden plots) for potatoes, beets, carrots, onions and garlic. Oh, and we’ll give winter squash another shot, though we didn’t have much success last year. All of these are crops that don’t require much maintenance or regular harvesting, thus, we don’t mind growing them three miles from our house.

At our home gardens we’ll plant Mark’s beloved tomatoes and peppers, snow peas (already in the ground), and lots of salad greens, spinach, kale, chard and other yummy greens. If I had any energy left today I’d be out there right now planting more spinach seeds…

Believe it or not there’s actually still snow on the ground in places, but with this new green growth today it seems that spring has finally arrived.