Planting Garlic

Ok, I have no idea how some people can find the time to do their blogs.  

It's not as though I haven't continued living my awesomely blog-worthy lifestyle, it's just hard to take photos of it and then write something clever and such.  First of all, I cannot hold the camera still.  Second, for most of the time that I'm being awesome, there is no one around to witness it (hence the blog).  

Anyhoo--it looks like I haven't posted anything since November, so here's what I've been up to since then. 

In October actually I planted garlic.  Apparently October is the time to do it.

The LARGER the cloves on your bulb, the better.  Size DOES matter when it comes to garlic :)

I got a large organic bulb and planted the cloves, then did the same with an "elephant garlic".  I don't really do much cooking with the elephant garlic, but it's soooo good when you just give it a little drizzle of oil and roast it in the terra cotta thingy then spread it on some crusty bread.  

Here are my little cloves spaced a few inches apart in a raised bed filled with great compost-y soil.

Obviously, you're going to be on the edge of your seat until I harvest these guys.  I'll try to remember to update then.  I have grown garlic before with fair success, but when reading about it I learned I should plant it in October whereas I naturally might have done it in the spring.  I also learned that although I once let my garlic plants grow for more than a season before I harvested (thinking they would grow bigger) what I should have done was snip off the flowering part when it appears.  

The reason for snipping off the flowering parts is that the plant's energy would focus on the garlic bulb growing bigger.  

When I neglected to pop off the flowers, little "sets" formed near the base of the plant.  I think you could eat them or plant them too--they were like little round garlic cloves, but I'd rather let my bulbs grow bigger.