Growing the Stinking Rose
Yesterday I did something I’d never done before.
I planted garlic.
In the past I always followed the motto “only grow it if it’s pricey to buy or highly perishable”. This meant that I grew herbs and tomatoes but not much else.
A few things have changed my thinking; I am usually too busy/out of town on Saturday mornings to shop for local produce at the farmers market, we bought a house with plenty of garden space, and I now want to consume as much organic produce as possible. More organics mean more $$$, it’s just a fact.
Gardening does cost money but it’s pretty minimal really, I have enough lettuce, kale, collards, and mustard greens in my garden to eat greens everyday for months and the seeds cost me less than $5.
I digress, the real reason I wanted to plant garlic is because it’s super simple, you just shove some cloves in the ground and nine months later you’ve got garlic! The websites I read also mentioned something about watering, mulching, and fertilizing but I’m a pretty lazy gardener and usually my “throw it in the ground and forget about it” approach works so I’m going with that.
Another reason I wanted to grow garlic is because most of the garlic I find in the store is from far, far away-like China! I am okay with buying bananas from Central America but garlic shipped all the way from China? Is that really necessary?
So out to the garden I went.
I broke the bulbs into individual cloves…
found a garlic-clove-sized-stick to make holes about an inch deep…
…and shoved in a clove!
If all goes as planned, the cloves will shoot up sprouts in the spring and be ready to harvest around July. Each clove grows a whole bulb and I planted about twenty.
I am already planning my garden for next year, I definitely want to grow some okra. Look at how gorgeous this red okra plant is!
There are still two things that I am leaving to the real farmers are potatoes and onions…for now.
