Oh Good Garlic!!!!

I talked a while ago about trying to grow garlic in Alaska. You can see that post here. I saw some at the Alaska State Fair that was beautiful - I think it was from the Kenai Peninsula and it was called Khabar.  Mom and I wanted to try garlic again and so we planned way ahead and ordered our garlic in the winter of last year (late fall actually) to be recieved in September-ish of this year for planting.

Our garlic came from Filaree Garlic Farms and the bulbs are fat, juicy and happy looking!  It has frozen quite hard here (before we even got the bulbs to plant) and so we both had our garlic bins and areas ready to go before the garlic got here.

That bag says "Purple Glazer" one of the varieties that we ordered for this year.  I had 6 of my Purple Glazer bulbs come back in the spring and harvested a lovely bit of garlic - even though moose came through and ate all the tops off of my onions and my garlic - strangest thing ever - that was a first for me!  So this year I had to dig and find the garlic to harvest it.  What a mess!  But tasty garlic!

So we have Khabar, Purple Glazer and Metechi varieties.  Mostly what are called "hardneck" varieties.

So you take the bulbs apart into plantable cloves- keeping the paper skin on the cloves.  The paper skin you see at left here are the ones from the very outside of the bulb.  Save it to use in your chicken or veggie broth - it adds a lot of flavor to those broths!

I started with this 6'x6' space filled with good compost and garden soil (part of my Wicked Good Dirt Hill).

There are a few different methods recommended to plant garlic but our directions from Filaree said to plant them 6" apart in rows 9" apart and about 2" deep.  I admit I fudged a little and mine are closer than that - Im at about 6" and 6".  I did get them the 2" deep though! Some are now a little deeper since a baby moose came by and trod around in the garlic bed to see what I have planted there!  I wasn't abe to retrieve all of the cloves out of the depth that his little hooves trod them darn it!  My fingers are crossed that they survive!

I put a label on each end of each row in case the curious Wicked Ravens get ahold of the tags - I might be left with one at least at one end?!  I have to still cover the garlic bed with leaf mulch and some screen to keep it from blowing away.  Some folks recommend putting blue board insulation on the garlic bed over the top of the leaf mulch, but I have not found that to work so well for me out here.  I have had better success with just the screen and leaf mulch - a think layer of it - 4"+ - and you let the snow (hopefully) do the rest.

Then you leave it to come up in the spring.  Garlic takes a year to mature - you plant in the fall and harvest in the fall!  That takes a big love of garlic and passion for gardening!

If you are looking for a challenge and you love garlic (which we do at Wicked Raven Farm) give a little garlic a try!  It is worth the work and the wait!

Blessed be as we slide gently into winter shouting Whoo Hoo!  Bring on the snow!

****UPDATE****

I got exactly zero garlic that came up!  Even though there was lots of mulch and snow cover - when I dug down to check on them after every bit of the garlic at my mom's place (Snowfire Gardens) not only came up but was about a foot tall already, there were just frozen rotten cloves.  Darn!

I don't think I'll try garlic again until I have a better (warmer) spot for it.  I might see about putting it over the leach field or septic next year and see if that helps, but for this year I think I'll just take a pass!

I hope that if you have tried garlic you have had great success, and pass on the variety that might grow in Big Lake, Alaska!

Blessed Be!