Planting garlic is one of my favorite fall activities. Putting our garlic in the ground and getting all of our garden beds ready for the winter ends up being a lovely time outside together, as a family, enjoying the brisk fall air.
There isn’t a set date that you need to plant your garlic by which can be confusing, but you want to make sure that you can get your garlic into the ground (that it isn’t frozen solid), and that it won’t be so warm after you plant it that it starts to sprout before it really turns to winter. Here, on the southern part of the coast of Maine most just make sure to get it planted before the ground freezes, at our house we are a bit more specific and find that the best time to plant for us is between Halloween and Thanksgiving.
We typically use 1-2 heads of garlic per week at our house in our cooking. Last year we were not quite to the point of planting enough garlic for our annual needs as well as enough for seed garlic, but we managed to get 60 cloves in the ground this year (without having to purchase any additional seed garlic). We will probably have to supplement with store bought around April/May to use in our cooking. We’ll get closer and closer each year!
There are a couple of different ways to make space in your soil, but you always want to put the garlic in facing the same way, leave the little papery layer on them and the flat part points down and the pointy part up.
I’ve planted in rows digging trenches before, but this year I just grabbed one of my kid’s rakes and used the handle to poke holes down into the garden bed about 3 inches deep.
The flat part of the clove is where roots will form to gather nutrients over the winter and spring, and green stalks will come up from the pointed end and break through our pine needle layer come spring.
Last year we had a weird weather pattern happen and a lot of the garlic in our area sprouted. It all died back again and we still managed to harvest almost every garlic that we planted. We want the garlic to focus all of its energy into creating those good strong roots rather than wasting energy shooting up greens before the winter.
We had an extra bag of soil laying around, so used that this year to cover them, and then put about a 5 inch layer of pine needle over them as mulch/protection for the winter.
The garlic will emerge easily from the pine needles in the spring, and the pine needles will keep weed pressure at bay. The garlic will be some of the first greens to show in our garden, and truthfully their laid back nature makes them one of my absolute favorite things to grow.
The girls were outside with us and helped pick up pine cones in the yard so that we could get one last mow (mostly to mulch up all the leaves). Final count on the day was 184 pinecones for those of you who may be curious.
All of our garden beds are tucked in for the winter with a nice layer of pine needles. Creating a bit of closure for the last garden season, and replenishing in preparation for the next. One of my favorite parts of living somewhere where there are very defined seasons is that the weather really does tell us what to do. What to do in our garden, what to do outside for fun, and what to take care of around our home.
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