Our garlic cloves have arrived at the farm and it is time to plant them. We decided to plant about a month early as suggested by the farm we purchased the garlic from. They also cracked the garlic, and separated the bulb debris from the cloves. So loading the machine is quite easy, just pour them in the planter and get to planting.
This year they will probably not do much, but after coming out of winter dormancy I think we should see some good growth next year during the spring and summer.
We bought a hardneck variety called "Music". The smell coming off the box and bags is really strong. As soon as we plant it all I will haul all the boxes out, I really like the smell of cooked garlic. But the smell of hundreds of pounds of it raw its a bit much to handle.
I guess cracking them releases a bunch of oils, the boxes showed up completely soaked. They were also quite warm, we could smell it before they even opened up the delivery truck.. lol
Bags were in each of the boxes, I removed the bags and placed them around to air out a little before loading them into the planter.
That was a lot of boxes of unpack, but really excited to get all of this in the ground.
We get the tractor out and get the planter all loaded up. It is a Erme branded planter, uses those bigger wheels on the side to drive the machinery inside that plants the cloves.
Loading in the garlic soon we will set off with the planter.
I bring over more as the machine runs low, takes a few times going back and forth to get it all loaded. I still have my water tank in the back.. did not feel like unloading it so I just stacked garlic around it lol.
We go back and forth on the plot planting three rows at a time. The machine has these spoons inside that pick up the garlic cloves and drops them as the machine drives forward.
This machine holds quite a bit, but we need to refill it just about every other row. Really glad to have this machine, I cannot even imagine now hard it would be to do this by hand. With thousands of cloves it would have to take a few days. But with this machine it was all done in a matter of a few hours.
Its hard to tell, but this field now has about 800 pounds of garlic planted in it. If you could smell it from the post you would know its there.. lol but its hard to see right now as the cloves are not doing much. But soon I hope to see little green bits coming out of the ground.
With our fertilizers sorted out, the field well tilled and now having our well I think we are ready to grow a lot of garlic next year.
