Garlic Reminders

Have you chosen your spot (or spots) to plant your garlic yet?

Some of mine will go in the garden and some in the back meadow bed. You might recall that’s the bed nature has been preparing for me. Not as nice yet as the garden, but I still think it’ll grow great garlic. Perhaps not as big, but nice.

I’m working on increasing the garlic I grow, because I’m eating so much. (6 to 8 large cloves each day) Chopped and mixed with shredded cabbage and carrot tossed with olive oil and vinegar – it tastes great. You don’t get the burning sensation of eating raw garlic; just a nice flavor.

Why Raw Garlic?

Raw garlic is so much more beneficial to your body than cooked garlic.

It’s an immune system booster; source of antioxidants that do all kinds of good things for our bodies; helps your respiratory and circulatory system; has anti-inflammatory properties; and is a natural antibiotic.

I’ve already gone through all the garlic I grew to eat.  All that remains are the bulbs grown from the bulbils my friend Jack sent me.

They mean a lot to me and I’m anxious to keep them going from year to year. It’ll be such fun to see what size bulbs I get next June.

In planting garlic, the larger the clove you plant, the larger the resulting bulb should be. But I’m going to plant even the smallest cloves of what I call “Jack’s garlic”. Maybe I’ll pull the smaller ones in late April or May and use them for salads.

When to Plant

In general, garlic should be planted 6 to 8 weeks before your first frost.

I usually plant in October although the charts all show our first potential for frost is in October.  But it usually stays nice until November and many times into December.

This year, I’ll plant in October and November as well.  I feel that will be plenty of time for the cloves to establish a good root system.  That root system is much more important than cloves putting up above ground growth.

Have You Ordered Your Garlic?

If you haven’t ordered yet, be thinking about it because just about all garlic suppliers sell out.  And sometime rather quickly.

Hopefully, you’ll check out GetGarlic.com to see if they have what you want.  (They have a great selection.)

They’re giving 10% OFF for TMG readers through tomorrow September 30th.  All you have to do is type tendingmygarden into the coupon code box at checkout.

Why order from GetGarlic.com?

If you’ve benefited from TendingMyGarden and like the information you’ve received for free, you will be helping keep TMG online when you order from them.   GetGarlic.com’s 3 month sponsorship does not pay for everything, but it goes a long way towards helping pay some of the expenses involved in keeping this site up.

Like every business, GetGarlic.com needs to see that their sponsorship is bringing them a return on their investment.  So if you order by tomorrow please type in tendingmygarden into the coupon code box.

If you order after that with no discount, please let them know you are a TMG reader. That way, they can better determine how many orders they’re receiving from their sponsorship.

Final Thoughts

Thanks in advance for helping me to keep helping you and other gardeners free of charge.

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