Autumn milestone

Garlic is planted! My favorite crop. It’s so trouble free. No deer predation. No diseases (so far), doesn’t suffer from slugs or snails. Magically appears in the spring after planting in the fall, when we’re going into the dark time of year. I don’t know what those cloves look like underground all winter, but I imagine their strong life force. They don’t just rot like any chunk of plant matter buried underground would. They want to grow.

I completed the initial weeding in the bed sometime last week. Sam loosened the soil with a fork, and helped remove the stringy roots of quack grass. The soil is dark and fluffy, with some frozen clods. Easy to push down the cloves to about their height.

The bed looks curved in the panorama but it’s not. It’s straight along the back of the garden. Outside the fence, because animals don’t bother it.

In the spring, I pull back some of the thick hay mulch to allow the shoots to grow. Then I tuck it back in to help suppress weeds. That’s about it until harvest time, usually in July. It’s such a pleasure to grow.