Liftoff in the Garlic Bed!

At the beginning of October, I went to the North Central Texas Fall Round-Up of folks from the Dave's Garden community. It was a cool, rainy day and not nearly the turnout as we've had at previous getogethers. One of the sweet ladies, who's a Master Gardener and extremely knowledgeable in Texas Native plants gave everyone a snack size bag of garlic pods to plant. I was so excited because I wanted to grow garlic this year, but our financial situation has kept us from being able to purchase any garlic to plant. The bag contained 2 large bulbs that will be ready to harvest next year and tons of little "bulblets" that will not be ready for 2 years.

A couple of weeks ago, I planted the garlic. We (DH did most of the hard labor) dug up the small bed in the backyard that had previously grown green beans, watermelon, pumpkins, and a rogue tomato plant. We added some compost from our compost pile, some llama manure (also secured at the round-up), and some mushroom compost to the soil that was already in the bed. Then we planted!



You can see the size difference between the 2 pod sizes in the pic above. The ones at the top of the two rows are the ones that will be ready to harvest next June or July. The smaller ones, with a tougher covering, will take longer to pop out and longer to reach maturity.

So I planted these on a Sunday. The next week, we had cooler temps and 8" of rain! Then the following week, we got more rain. I was beginning to panic, thinking the little bulbs had either rotted or were planted too deeply. Then, during my walk about the gardens this morning, I discovered LIFE in the garlic beds!!



There are 2 little bulbs poking their heads off. These are the ones that were bigger and will be ready next year. Yesterday, I planted the remaining 12 small bulblets in a different bed just in case these didn't make it. Now, I just have to find a spot for the 4 o'clocks I got!