Onions, Garlic and Potatoes

A few weeks ago I transplanted all the garlic over to the onion bed - easy job but very time consuming. I must remember not to the plant garlic where I plan to plant our summer veggies! Spring planting always seems so far out to me when I plant the garlic and I'm not known for patience. I love the look of the greens coming through the straw. I also love the fact that one bed is completely planted.

 
 Yesterday I planted about 8 rows of lettuce and 2 rows of arugula. A must have on Colin's homemade pizza - yum! Today I plan to finish planting the leeks and more onions and this weekend the composter will be converted to a potato growing bin. We have a stackable composter which allows us to achieve what they did in this great tutorial here.  We will be growing both red and white potatoes this year.

Garlic

We love garlic and it's been one of the easiest and most rewarding things to grow. We initially had a hard time finding garlic at our local garden stores so I thought about planting garlic purchased from the supermarket but after some research found out that often growth inhibitors are used to stop garlic from sprouting and can be made from hormones or chemicals. I ended up buying our garlic from the local farmers market selecting the largest bulbs. I've read that if you plant large cloves they tend produce large garlic bulbs and so far this seems to be true. We tend to plant our garlic in the fall (Oct) and harvest now through July. When the greens turn brown and yellow I know it's pretty much harvest time.You can also dig around it and feel the size of the bulb to check before you pull it out.  I'm thinking about planting more cloves now to see if they will grow. How wonderful it would be to have this year round from our backyard! 

 Garlic Three Ways (Thanks Hungry Mouse!)

1. Roasted garlic
2. Garlic-infused oil
3. Roasted garlic compound butter

From And Sow My Garden Grows

From And Sow My Garden Grows