Saturday, October 20, 2007

Planting Garlic

Jennine's Uncle Tony grows so much food in his supersize garden that I would almost call him a farmer! (At least compared to me anyway) For my birthday this year Jeannine gave me, among other things, a bunch of his Italian Garlic. When I say Italian, I don't just mean garlic=Italian, I mean it's from his father-IN ITALY! Since he plants his garlic crop right from this kind of garlic I decided not to eat mine and plant it this fall.

Typically the date to plant garlic around here is October 1st, although given the weather this year, I think I'm just fine. I put it out in the patch next to the driveway where I had the zucchini (I swear I think I'm not ever going to have grass there. Perhaps I will deem that my free food garden!) I put out about 56 cloves which should yield 56 heads of garlic. This is also hard neck garlic which means that it grows the scrapes that can be removed and eaten in the springtime.

I've never planted garlic before so this is pretty exciting for me. I don't know if I actually use 56 heads of garlic a year (we'll find out!) And I will, of course, share with friend and family!

1 comment:

Loriann said...

We love the hardneck garlic too. I planted 89 cloves yesterday. Normally we plant in Sept but due to the warm weather in our State, it is fine to plant this late. Garlic is one of our favorite garden items. We gave some to our favorite Mexican Restaurant chef and he took it home because it was 'better than what I get for the restaurant'. Everyone we give it to loves it. It has a purple skin on it. Not sure what kind other than hardneck. We just keep replanting cloves.