First planting in the new garden… at the new house

I am so excited!! We spent a couple days putting together a new raised bed, of the many yet to come, so that I could get the garlic in for next July harvest. I prefer planting about September 15th, but will go as late as October 15th. So it needed to happen right now. The deer fence isn’t up yet, but the buried garlic bulbs should be safe until it is. 

This year I lost all of my old garlic to what seemed to be simply a failure to thrive. They were small and stunted and a lot had bright yellow cloves. So I disposed of the lot of them and just used the other garlics from plantings from the nursery and farms. Here is the bowl before they were separated. They are HUGE. Some are Music and I think some are Red Russian. 

This new raised bed is made with our usual formula. Small fallen alder trees in the bottom. A thin layer of soil. A sprinkle of Urea. A thick layer of soil. A heavy sprinkle of Fish Bone Meal and a tiny bit of Urea. Then about five more inches of soil. With a bit more Fish Bone Meal in the top layer. 

This year I have planted 45 nice big fat cloves. They are exactly 6” apart. I poked 3” holes with my dibber and positioned the cloves so that each had about 1/2” of soil over it. Some cloves needed a bit of soil pushed in the hole so they didn’t sit too low and other had to be wiggled in a bit further down as they were HUGE. All in all, what a fun day planting in the rain. I love everything about growing garlic. 

Precision holes poked

Laying out the garlic


Garlic planted and wire down to keep the wild turkeys from scratching in the bed