Garlic, start to finish

Last fall, I planted what ultimately turned out to be five beds of garlic. Four beds were the variety I'd grown the year before, and the fifth bed was a later addition in which I planted a larger-sized variety. I always plant German porcelain-neck garlic.

By April, the plants looked green and healthy.

I ended up harvesting it in early September, which was honestly a bit late. I should have pulled it up mid-August or so.

This is the size difference between the regular-sized garlic I planted in the four beds, and the larger variety I planted in the fifth bed. (Guess which variety I'll be replanting this year!)

After each bed was harvested, I trimmed off the stems and put the bulbs in a bucket.

After everything was harvested, I had a good amount (in the black tub). Each day, I sat down to trim the garlic, filling a bowl with the trimmed stuff. Working my way through the black tub took about two weeks of trimming in my spare time.

As I worked, I put aside any exceptionally large cloves for planting.

Because I waited so long to harvest the garlic, it came out of its paper shell rather dirty, so I carefully washed and dried it.

Every few pounds, I chopped the garlic up, then put it in a bag and froze it.

Ultimately I ended up with five bags of chopped garlic in the freezer totaling 21.25 pounds. Soon, however, whenever we opened the freezer, we were greeted with the overpowering scent of garlic. I knew it was time to can it up.

I took the bags out of the freezer and let them defrost overnight.

If the garlic smell in the freezer was a bit much, it was nothing next to 21 pounds of defrosted chopped garlic sitting on the kitchen table.

To can minced garlic, especially in this quantity, I started by boiling two large pots of water.

After the water reaches boiling, I turn off the heat and add the chopped garlic. This parboils the garlic.

I let the garlic soak in the hot water for about ten minutes. Then I started filling canning jars. My pressure canner fits 18 regular-mouth canning jars at at time, so I started with that.

The jars are topped off with the cookwater. It's helpful to slide a knife along the inside of the jars to reduce air pockets and bubbles.

Wiping the jar rims.

This is how I store my canning rings.

First batch into the canner.

About 14 lbs. of pressure for 30 minutes.

It took two batches to can up the harvest.

Final tally: 28 pints of minced garlic. That's more than enough to last us a year. Or two. Maybe three.

I washed the jars before storing them in the pantry.

Aha, but I wasn't finished with the garlic. I still needed to get next year's crop planted. Not, more than likely, because we'd run out of canned garlic before next year; but because even with a super-abundant harvest, things must be planted when they must be planted. And garlic must be planted in the fall.

Also, I had ordered a pound of seed garlic in a jumbo size. I'm still trying to "recreate" the huge garlic cloves I grew in our last garden at our old house, and this jumbo-sized garlic was closer to what I was used to. Plus, of course, I had reserved some of the larger cloves from this year's harvest for planting.

Before planting, however, I wanted to amend the beds with compost and sand. This is some of our composted cow manure which Don scooped out of the barnyard and piled below the driveway.

I shoveled some into a wheelbarrow and trundled it up to the garden. And I mean UP to the garden. Everything on our property is sloped, so it's like we're always climbing, y'know?

I decided to plant just two (rather than five) beds with garlic. These two particular beds had potatoes in them before, so I raked them more or less level.

I dumped the first load of compost on one of the beds, and went for another. Darcy was a big help during this process.

I trundled up four loads of compost, two per bed.

Then, from the other side of the property, I scooped up a wheelbarrow full of sand. It. Was. Heavy. So heavy, in fact, that I simply couldn't push it up the incline into the garden.

I had to get a second wheelbarrow and empty a bit of the sand into it, then push that up, then repeat the process a couple more times.

Here's about half the sand, covering one bed.

Using a pitchfork, I turned over the compost/sand and worked it into the soil. Fortunately this was an easier process than I anticipated, so it didn't take long.

The beds were kinda overfilled, but that's okay. They'll settle over the winter.

Then it was time to pull out the seed garlic. Homegrown stuff on the left, new jumbo garlic on the right.

Here's the difference in clove size.

Of the new jumbo garlic, I only had 24 individual cloves, which planted half a bed.

Then I placed the homegrown seed garlic in the rest of the beds.

Planting is easy. Lever a hole with the garden tool, push the bulb down, cover, and voilà.

The last task was to mulch the beds with straw. I pulled up the hay sled with the straw, which normally is tucked under the porch to keep the straw dry.

The garlic beds are now finished. Except for watering and a little light weeding, there is very little I'll need to do to the garlic until next summer.

Darcy's final act was to steal one of my work gloves. He has a "thing" for gloves (but only if they're outside). I had to throw a Frisbee to distract his attention so I could rescue my glove.

Another part of the harvest, done.

Garden update

Since we've deer-proofed our garden by installing 10-1/2-foot-high nuclear deer fencing, some readers have asked for an update on what's growing.

Unfortunately we completed the fencing too late to plant some of the things we wanted to plant (notably corn), and we also didn't get the full number of raised beds installed. Bottom line, only about three-quarters of the potential space is currently planted, and some of the planted beds aren't thriving. Nor is the drip irrigation system yet hooked up, though at least the underground infrastructure is in place.

But I'm getting ahead of myself. Here's a wide shot of the garden as it currently looks:

In the foreground are five beds of garlic. Another two weeks or so, and they will be ready to harvest.

Interspersed in several of the garlic beds are volunteer potatoes (guess what I planted there last year?). I seldom remove volunteers. They're too much fun.

Not counting the volunteers, I planted eight beds of potatoes. Last year I had planted six beds, and the deer ate the leaves down to nubbins. Discouraged, I stopped watering – and yet still managed to harvest about sixty pounds of medium-sized potatoes (i.e., about ten pounds per bed, an abysmal return). This year, with the vegetation undisturbed and with regular watering, I'll be interested in seeing how much we harvest.

I planted two beds of onions...

...and one bed of green (bunching) onions. The bunching onions got a hard start because I didn't get around to weeding out the wheat (which grows from the straw mulch) until quite late, so most of the plants are still playing catch-up.

I have four beds of strawberries.

I'm picking a bowl of strawberries every few days. Two of the beds are Fort Laramie berries, and two are Ozark Beauty.

I had a bunch of tomato plants I grew from seed that had been sitting on the deck until the garden was fenced. As a result, they were stunted when I transplanted them. They're growing, but they're not very big. I photographed this bed before I weeded out the wheat grass.

They looked happier after I weeded.

The broccoli, which I also started from seed, has fared worst of all. As with the tomatoes, they were stunted from the start.

Then, to make things worse, the poor plants came down with a massive infestation of flea beetles, tiny jumping beetles that suck all the juices out of the leaves.

I'm starting to get the flea beetles under control, but it's too late to expect much (if anything) from the plants. In fact, I don't think they'll survive, which is a shame since broccoli is my favorite vegetable.

I have a volunteer sunflower growing in one of the potato beds. No doubt a seed from our winter bird feed was dropped here.

I've had volunteer sunflowers grow before, but always the deer got to them. This time it will be fun to watch it mature.

I also have a couple of volunteer tomatoes growing in yet another potato bed, the one in which I had grown (or tried to grow) tomatoes last year. As always, despite being cloched with deer netting, the deer got the tomatoes.

Last year I grew cherry, paste, and beefsteak tomatoes. I have no idea what kind these volunteers may be.

By far the most successful plants are the spaghetti squash.

I've never grown spaghetti squash before, and I made a grave error when planting. I planted twelve seeds in one bed, forgetting one critical factor: Spaghetti squash are related to zucchini, which of course is famously productive. Imagine planting twelve zucchini plants, and you'll start to understand the scope of the issue. I have huge numbers of spaghetti squashes coming in.

And with many flowers still blooming, I can expect more.

And then, comically, I even have a volunteer spaghetti squash growing in one of the potato beds.

(If you're wondering how I can get a volunteer squash from something I've never planted before, it's because in the fall, when I empty the compost tumbler, I bury the compost in the garden beds. A seed from a squash we had once eaten for lunch sprouted.)

As you can see, there is room for one more row of nine beds (two of which are in place but unplanted).

Clearly the game-changer in the garden is the installation of the deer fencing. Next year, we'll get the rest of the garden beds installed and the drip irrigation system hooked up. I'll be able to plant early and, hopefully, realize the full potential of this growing space.

The maximum this garden can hold is 35 beds (three rows of nine beds, one row of eight beds). However we've designed it that, should the need arise, we can expand and double the capacity to 70+ beds by extending the garden length-wise. We have enough drip irrigation supplies to accommodate that possibility as well.

Obviously getting a garden installed has been a multi-year project, and many other projects have taken precedence. Still, it's nice to have a proper garden at last.