It is November and time to plant our garlic patch and as mentioned in our harvesting garlic  post this past August we are sharing our planting techniques. Growing and planting garlic is simple. We look forward to this event each year because there is nothing like the enjoyment of the flavor and freshness of your own grown garlic.

We start with broadcasting aged manure and organic fertilizer to the area and then till it into the soil.

Tilling The Area

When the soil has been thoroughly tilled the area is graded.

Grading The Soil

Now we are ready to separate the bulbs into individual cloves. We start with our favorite variety Russian Red, this garlic is favored for its ease of peeling and wonderful garlic flavor. We retrieve the box of garlic bulbs from the cellar that we set aside from our summer harvest. The largest cloves are then culled for planting with the smaller ones set aside for cooking. Always remember the largest cloves yield the largest bulbs.

Beautiful Large Bulb Saved For Planting

Separating The Cloves

We place sticks at the end of each planting row and then tie a string between the sticks to keep our planting rows straight. 

Planting

We use a round stick to make holes 1-2 inches deep 4-6 inches apart and then followed up with placing the garlic cloves in each hole.When we finish planting the first row of garlic we remove the string to the next row and identify the row’s variety we just planted, in this case Russian Red. The cloves are planted just barely under the surface.

Elephant garlic is another variety we plant.  It is not as easy to peel as Russian Red but has a milder flavor that is enjoyed in salad dressings and other dishes. This clove weighs well over an ounce.

Elephant Garlic

Planting The Cloves

Rows Of Garlic

When all the cloves have been planted we rake soil over each row carefully so as not to pull out the cloves due to there proximity to the surface.

Covering The Rows

When all the rows have been covered we apply a heavy covering of straw to prevent the cloves from heaving during the winter months. We have just over a foot of straw for frost protection.

Applying The Straw

Lastly we place several large pine boughs to keep the straw from blowing away in our strong coastal winds.

Pine Boughs

Here the garlic will stay covered until spring, we will post on our garlic unveiling then.

It’s that time of year when we are digging up, dividing and preparing our dahlia tubers for winter storage. With over 100 dahlia plants we have our work cut out for us, but we manage to work at it bit by bit. First we trim up a few outer branches on each dahlia so we may easily access and cut the main stem.

Trimming Up Dahlia Branches

We leave a 6-8 inch handle which will come in handy for transporting to the rinsing and cutting station.

Leaving A Handle

Completing The Cut Down Process

After all the dahlias have been cut down, each stem is then properly tagged with the dahlia name. We dig up to 12 inches away around the perimeter of the stem so as not to damage the tubers underground and then they are carted to our rinsing station to rid all excess soil and set aside to dry. Every step is done with care to avoid damaging the tubers.

Rinsed Tubers

After all the tubers are rinsed we are ready to divide each clump into individual tubers. Some dahlias can be challenging as in this example of Lupin Ben so having patience is a plus.

Lupin Ben

We start by looking for “eyes” on individual tubers and in this case the red arrow indicates one of many.

Tuber "eyes"

In this example A indicates where a tuber has been cut and B is next in line.

Dividing

The tuber is then cut, labeled, and treated with a fungicide before storing. We have two methods of storing our tubers. The larger ones are layered in pine shavings in a cardboard box and smaller tubers are wrapped in plastic wrap 5 to a pack without a single tuber touching one another and then stored in a plastic container.

Storing Dahlias