Garlic Experiment Update

Things have been thawing around here for about two weeks now.  The soil in my flowerbeds around the house is mostly workable.  And, drum roll please, the garlic bulbs I planted in plastic cups and stuck in my cellar last month are growing!!

So, in light of the so far successful garlic experiment, and the fact that a few things are actually sprouting outside--like a garlic head or two I missed during harvest last year!--I decided it was time to go ahead and transplant my garlic out to the garlic bed.

Late yesterday afternoon, I cleaned off and weeded the bed, as well as lifted those heads I missed last summer. Then I mixed in a nice thick layer of composted manure off the pile out by the garden.  Today after lunch, I hauled my trays of garlic-in-cups out of the cellar and to the terraced bed behind the house.

one of four trays of garlic sprouts

Next, I planted the garlic in rows, and added markers noting which type was planted where.

Of course, as I mentioned in my original post on this garlic experiment, the seed garlic got jumbled together between harvest and planting, so I didn't know for sure which head of garlic was which type.  So I made notes on the cups as I planted the cloves.  Today I wrote those designated names on the markers (which are wooden 'craft'--aka popsicle--sticks).

This variety had 16 cloves per head, so I marked it "16".

This variety had few cloves per head, but they were enormous.

These cloves had red skins, so naturally they got called "Red". 

I'm thinking they might be the Spanish Roja. . .

These, well, they were a hardneck, not an extraordinary amount of cloves per bulb and not especially large either.

The ones I missed pulling in July, and sprouted in a few different rows, so could be pretty much anything, I unimaginatively dubbed "Mystery".

Once they were all tucked safely into the ground, I grabbed a leftover bale of straw from last year's garden, and scattered a few flakes over the sprouts as mulch, since our night time temperatures are still dipping below freezing most nights.  

So far, things are looking good.  If the garlic sprouts survive transplant, I think they will be right on schedule as if I had actually planted them in the garlic bed last October, when I should have.