Garlic in winter

Garlic and detritus, Feb 2017

It's nice that the garden book I'm following for this project, The Complete Guide to Self Sufficiency by John Seymour, has a season-by-season calendar of Things to Do;  I knew to plant my garlic in October so that it would be ready for harvest next July.  I also knew to plant it in the Roots 2017 bed, giving me a way to judge where it should go and how much room I should leave.

This bed was Misc last year, but I've kind of shuffled boundaries around to accommodate one more bed (Potatoes, which I didn't grow last year), so it also takes up a bit of what was the holding bed in 2016, too.  Next to the garlic is the shallots (a few have sprouted, but are smaller than the garlic.  There isn't a lot of room left in the Roots bed, but I'll put parsnips and beets there a little later--here's hoping these  ones evade the slugs.

My little rows hold four plants across, planted about 2-4 inches apart.  I planted adjacent bulbs so that they're staggered;  going vertically down the row the bulbs are in a straight line, but going horizontally they're in a zig zag.  This means I can cram more bulbs in this small section.  I actually planted two batches;  the more prominent batch came from the produce section of the grocery store and the smaller plants to the left were leftover from my own harvest last year.  I planted the storebought ones about a month before my own saved ones, which I think accounts for the difference in size.

Incidently, I have a couple more volunteer garlic plants resprouting where I missed digging them up last summer;  it looks like there are three or so, but as they've grown from a full bulb instead of single cloves, they look like little bunches of grass, all packed together.  Hopefully I'll remember to get them out with the rest.