Planting our Garlic 

We planted 350 lbs for the 2009 crop.

Linabella's plants all of our garlic by hand.  First we break our seed garlic into individual cloves.  We save our largest bulbs from that years crop to plant in the fall.

Preparing soil for planting.

Making trenches for the garlic. We plant every 3 inches and 3 inches deep.

  Hand planting garlic every 3 inches.  We do 3 rows next to each other, than a walking row.

We sprinkle lime and organic plant fertilizer (composted chicken manure, organic nitrogen from soy and alfalfa) in the trench of each row of garlic.

We then cover each trench with 3 inches of soil.

This year we are trying something different.  To control the weeds in the walking rows, we layed down permeable black fabric.  We are hoping that the weed seeds will not germinate under the black plastic and also that the soil next to the garlic will keep warm. (In 2008 we used cardboard between the rows, it worked well, however, it was labor intensive to keep enough grass clipping and leaves on top of it. It is however, very easy to get donated cardboard boxes from local companies, so financially it is a good option.)

The last thing we do is cover the garlic rows with a thick layer of straw.  This helps insulate the garlic in the winter as well as keep the weeds down in the spring and summer.