Garlic, and Next Year More Garlic

Two heads of Garlic,  November 16th, 2012

      Last year a neighbor gave me two heads of named garlic, a first for me.  The head on the left was Red Russian, and the head on the right was Music.

      The Red Russian divided into eleven cloves, nearly 50% more than the seven cloves I got from the Music bulb.  The cloves were planted on November 16th of last year.  The bulbs were harvested in July of this year, with one bulb of Music lost to the wet early summer.  Many of the Red Russian bulbs felt a little spongy, also because of the wet soil.  The bulbs were dried for a couple of weeks on a rack in the porch, then bagged and forgotten in the garage.

      Hoping it is not too late to plant garlic, I rescued the bulbs from their stay in the garage.  The Music bulbs felt pretty firm, and split up nicely into 37 cloves that would be planted.

      These are the biggest, plumpest cloves of garlic I have ever seen!  Look at that one monster to the left of my thumb.  And from the taste test back in July, quite tasty too.

      The Music cloves were planted at the east end of bed number two in the back yard garden.  The more numerous but smaller cloves of Red Russian were planted in a group near the middle of bed number two.  Two of the Red Russian bulbs had dried to essentially dust, and many of the small cloves were just discarded.  Music certainly won the first year competition, though Red Russian may just have disliked the wet spring and early summer.  Next year could be completely different.

      The cloves were pushed down into the soil in three shallow trenches, then lightly covered.  From just one head each last year, I should have a monster haul next year.  And then..... the numbers get mind boggling.