Garlic

Last fall, I ordered and planted 2 heads of garlic.  Inchelium Red was the variety.  It was an experiment, as most things begin at this little place here. 

The line of thinking went something like this:  I want to grow garlic.  Can I grow garlic?  I'll choose a variety seemingly suited to my climate and taste, and give it a try.

Inchelium red, according to the tag that came with those two heads ordered from Seed Savers Exchange last year, was found growing on an Indian Reservation in Inchelium, Washington.  It is a softneck variety that produces 12-16 cloves per bulb and was rated the best tasting garlic by the Rodale Institute in 1990.

Sounded good to me. 

I planted those two heads, clove by clove, in rows in one of the terraced beds behind the house.  I mulched them with some hay that was too moldy to feed to the horses.  I laid chicken wire on top of the mulch to keep the chickens from scratching it --and the garlic cloves-- up (pesky chickens!  One of the hazards of free ranging.)

Then, I waited. 

Winter came.  I hoped the garlic was snug down in the ground under it's layer of mulch.  I hoped it wasn't too cold, or too wet, or too dry down there. 

Spring came, and I anxiously awaited shoots to show me the garlic was alive.

They came.  I was elated.

The shoots grew. 

They grew through the chicken wire at an alarming pace, making me worry that if I didn't remove it ASAP I would somehow ruin my garlic harvest trying to take the wire off of fully grown plants.  But how to keep the darn chickens from scratching for bugs and worms in the mulch?  Scratching chickens could decimate my garlic plants in a matter of minutes.

A conversation with a friend reminded me of a little blurb in Mother Earth News I had read during the winter about someone who took an old trampoline and turned it into a chicken tractor.  I looked out the window at the trampoline in our backyard.  The very trampoline that, the summer before, DH and I had declared off limits to our children because the stitching on it was old and rotten and a few of the springs had fallen off.  The trampoline that was no longer safe for it's intended purpose.  The trampoline I had declared I could not and would not resew to make into a safe trampoline for our adult-sized children to play on. (Just the thought of all that hand stitching through thick stuff made my fingers ache!) The trampoline we had been discussing "What To Do With", which is the discussion usually had before something leaves this little place here in the trash bin or with a "FREE" sign taped to it out by the road.  I knew what to do with that old trampoline now!

I bought a roll of chicken wire and some cable ties.  I 'fenced in' the underside of the trampoline, except for one section which I snugged right up to the chicken door of the coop.  Voila!  A portable chicken run to go with my portable chicken coop to keep my lovely but pesky chickens from digging up my soon to be planted garden and my garlic.

Happily, I removed the chicken wire that covered the mulch on the garlic bed.  The chickens were happy in their shaded, moveable run.  No longer free ranged, but pastured!  The garlic could grow freely.  I could relax.

I watched, as spring turned to summer.  The tips of the garlic leaves turned yellow. The necks turned from green to brown, and the plants leaned precariously over the mulch.  Was it time to harvest?


This morning, I decided, it was.  Tentatively, I grabbed the neck of the first garlic plant and gave a tug.  Up it came, out of the soil, out of the mulch.  A beautiful, round, white head of garlic!  Looked done to me.  So I pulled up the remaining 20 plants.

What a glorious sight!

Garlic curing in the air. 

I'll take the 4 or 5 largest heads and plant the cloves from those this fall for next year's garlic crop.  We'll eat the rest.  YUM! 

I think I'll also peruse this year's catalog from SSE and see about getting a hardneck variety to add to my new found garlic growing passion.