Archive for October 11th, 2011

Growing Organic Garlic

10.11.11

Posted by Mikie Baker  |  No Comments »

I expect your seeds are getting ready to sprout. Keep them nice and moist and within a week, magic will happen in the garden.

When I planted my square foot gardening bed, I also planted a bed of gorgeous, large, organic garlic. I ordered my garlic from Grey Duck Garlic in Colfax, Washington. They are third generation growers and their website is loaded with useful information for growing garlic. They even have a section on growing garlic in the south, bless their hearts.

At the end of September my shipment arrived.

Grey Duck Organic Garlic, nicely packaged

I ordered three kinds: Romanian Red (spicy), Jane’s German Red (old-fashioned garlic) and Georgian Crystal (easy to grow). The 100 cloves I received are large and gorgeous. When I went out to plant my Square Foot Garden, I prepped another bed and planted the garlic. Now I don’t have to worry about vampires anymore.

Unfortunately, I didn’t take a picture before I planted all the garlic, but what I did was to plant the cloves about 4 inches apart and stagger the rows.

I did dig out one clove to show you

Notice how large it is? They were are like that. Just lovely. If you’ve never grown garlic before, it’s not hard to do. You plant the cloves pointed end up in the ground about an inch deep. Water them in and then mulch. They grow slowly over the winter and are ready in June. I’m looking forward to seeing if my cloves get as large as these.

We’ll see if the investment was worth it. Gardeners always have high hopes!

One last thing before I sign off. Remember my 1 3/4 pound sweet potato? Well, that’s nothing in Texas. Down here at The Funny Farm, I have now produced a 4 1/2 pound monster. I’m beginning to feel like Octomom.

It’s that really large one in the upper right corner

Guess I need to throw a Sweet Potato Party and invite a group over to eat that thing!

Tomorrow’s column day and I don’t know what we’ll get into on Friday.

Spreading laughter throughout the world…one chuckle at a time.

Mikie Baker
www.mikiebaker.com