Planting garlic with a little help from my girls

I’m a little late planting garlic this fall, but, because our ground does not freeze, it will be okay.  As you can see from the photos, November is still bare feet weather in SC.  Later on the day of garlic planting we all switched to shorts because we became too warm in sweatshirts, even though snow had fallen a few days before.  Only in SC can we have such crazy weather!


I dug trenches about 4 inches deep and about 6 inches apart, and the girls put the garlic cloves in pointed side up, about 6 inches apart.  I put in a sample row and had the girls put in their cloves in line with mine. 

I covered the garlic with soil, and then put a thick layer of hay on top to reduce weeding chores.  Besides pulling the weeds that will penetrate the straw, my garlic chores will be over until early next summer.  When the plants send up stalks to bloom, I’ll break them off and use the tender garlic scapes in stir-fries.  After the leaves turn brown, on a hot morning I’ll pull the plants from the ground, let them dry in the sun, and I’ll bring them into the shed to finish curing.