Finally, Some Garlic in the Ground.

So a while back I overhauled my garlic, which was poorly stored, and put the stuff that seemed to be holding well into an improvised root cellar and put the stuff that had started sprouting into a cold frame.  The stuff in the cold frame hasn't all sprouted, but a lot of it has.

I think I could transplant a lot of this at this stage, but where?  It's so far along that I think it could get cold damaged easily unless it went into a larger cold frame.  So I'll ignore it for now and concentrate on the stuff that's been in the pit.

I pulled the blue bucket out.  That's the stuff that got tipped over when the pit flooded.  A lot of it looks like this:

Healthy white roots and an inch or two of top growth.  Since I'm planting them a few inches down, the whole thing gets buried.

I got my bed prep done the other day.  This bed is 40' long.  The board in the foreground is my planting pattern board.  It's a 2x6 that has a notch every 6" on each side, but the notches are offset so it will make a regular triangular pattern.  The boards on the left are temporary, there to guide me.  When I did this for last years crop, I didn't use that guide and things wove back and forth some.  Since I plan on several beds of this with even pathways, I'd better use the guide.

As I got ready to plant, I did have one concern:  Chickens.  I'm going to have to work up more area in an even more irresistible manner, and maybe put some kind of cover over the bed as it sprouts.

So here's how I plant.  I use the board as a guide and use a small hand tool called a ho-mi, also known as a Korean hand plow.

I dig a trench along the side of the board...

... put in the sprouting garlic cloves...

... roll the board over, which should advance it 7"...

... and use the ho-mi to dig a new trench along the side of the board, burying the previous cloves in the process. 

I try to rake both away from me and toward me with the ho-mi to cover the cloves evenly.  When digging for a row that starts 3" from the near end of the board, I try to dig my trench a little long, so that the final clove goes in 3" beyond the far end.  That means 6 cloves per trench.  That should give me about 400 cloves (eventual heads) in my 40' bed .  I intend to put in three or four of these beds.

The chickens enjoy this greatly.  I occasionally have to move one out of the trench or push them off after they peck at my wedding ring or something.

This spacing worked well last year, but was there over the winter with a heavy hay mulch on it.  This makes me think grabbing some of that ancient hay from the barn might not be a bad idea at this stage.  I wonder if that will make the chickens even more likely to scratch at it though.

Otherwise, I have to add that it was an amazing day, weather-wise.  The historic average high for March 12th is 37°F, with a low of 19°.  The previous record high was 52°.   We had a high today of 61°, and our forecast low is 37° for tonight.  I can here Canada Geese squabbling back in the swamp, establishing their nests.  The ice on the long pond at the bottom of the field has large holes in it where the pickerel weed remains gathered just enough more heat from the sun to melt those spots first.  I need to remember that this is not normal, and that anything I plant out due to irrational exuberance will need protection at times, because we will most likely have a few more cold nights, maybe as low as 20°.  Still, I wonder when the spring peepers will come out.