Popped, Planted, Mulched–Our first crop is in the ground!

Yesterday we finished the garlic. It was a bit of a process. First we had to track down a large quantity of fine organic seed garlic; we ended up getting it from four different sources, some of them were local connections from the farmer's markets, and others were commercial seed growers like Salt Spring or Boundary Garlic. Then we prepped the land chosen for garlic, which was three 40 meter rows. Prepping involved adding organic blood-meal and rock phosphate to give the garlic a dose of nitrogen for the winter, and phosphate is good for bulb plant density and mass. Eventually, once the farm is more established, we will used our own composts.  After tilling this and some green manure into the beds, we measured them out, and drew 30 cm by 20 cm grids on them, which was our spacing for the garlic cloves. Then we hand planted over 3000 cloves and tamped them down to get good soil to clove contact. And finally we mulched the beds with straw to thermally protect the little cloves so they don't freeze and thaw too much over the winter. We referred to Growing Great Garlic by Ron Engeland throughout this process, and found the book to be pretty good. It was thorough and concise.  Next project... How will we, and can we, become a certified organic farm?

Popping Garlic

Delaney breaking garlic bulbs apart to get the cloves ready for planting. We will be planting several different varieties, like Music, Chesnok Red, Yugoslavian Porcelain and Armenian. The garlic will be going in the ground in the next couple days.

Cover Crops Growing

Our cover crop is coming up quick, despite the sub zero temps.