And it is DONE! The SCGO Garlic Planting of 2022. It went quicker and easier than past years, thanks to a lot of prep work up front. cracking the bulbs ahead of time, each in its own labelled paper bags with name and number of cloves. All of the signage prepped, counted and sorted. And then the fantastic weather of 20C with a nice breeze.
In past years we have planted at night, with floodlights with rain, sleet and snow coming down. No More!
We planted on Saturday morning Oct 22 and on Sunday afternoon Oct 23.

So, we used the 8 hole Dibbler Mark II, 8 spikes in the dibbler, each 1 3/8″ diameter and 7″ long with 5″ spacing between spikes. Two extending bars measured distance between rows, we used 6″ between rows.
We used two poles to hold onto it whilst jumping on each end and in the middle to get ground penetration.

Unfortunately the dibbler outpaces our human capabilities. We typically move backwards down the bed with feet spread across the 40″ so as to not compact the soil. So of us cannot straddle 40″ anymore 🙂 As well, with 8, larger spikes rather than the Dibbler Mark I, 6 smaller diameter spikes, the absolute PSI driving into the ground is much less. Even jumping up and down on the dibbler into damp soil, it rarely achieve the 7″ depth. We aim for the clove to be 4-5 ” below grade and with the shape of the spike, incomplete depth, this works out for us.

So next year we are planning to move to a narrowed Mark III dibbler, either back to the original 6 hole model or an intermediate 7 hole model. Same force on top with fewer spikes means more PSI per spike, hopefully going deeper than this one did this year.

We planted in VegBed5’s eastern end going from north to south. The signage is laminated laser printed names staples to 1×2″x1′ stakes. This naming system has shown to stand up to time the best of all others. The print is facing north, to avoid sunlight.

The first sub-bed had 38 rows, then 40, 43, 38 and 16, totalling 175 rows * 8 cloves per row = 1400 cloves!
It took just over an hour for each sub-bed and in total about 5-6 hours planting

One last task is to cover them with straw to protect them from direct sunlight and the freeze/thaw cycles that happen over winter. Once frozen they should stay frozen until spring.

The number of varieties planted this year: 18+21+17+18+4=78
We cut down on the number of types this year, as many of the smaller yields just did not make the cut. We expanded the number of planted cloves in those varieties that did particularly well, like Fishlake and Hungarian.

The planting method:

1) we planted stakes at the beginning and end of the subbed, a measured distance away from the fence to allow for a walking path. A string was tied to give a line to work on.

2) the subbed was raked over to get as flat of a surface as possible.

3) The first dibber went in up against the beginning stake. Each subsequent dibble lined up with the string and used the two extension bars to mark 6″ from the last set of holes.

4) Name stakes went in on the opposite side of the string. Each row got its own namestake. As this was going on, Kim would get the next bag, check the name against the stake and start planting about 4-5″ down, or as deep as we could get. Because the 40″ wide row was too wide and we did not want to go around from one side to the other, we would plant two twos and then rake them over to fill in the holes, and then step forward onto the space to plant the next rows, etc. etc.

5) Once the subbed was done, the string came off and two more beginning and end stakes were measured and driven in for the next subbed.
Later today the straw will go on top of the garlic, protecting it against extremes of light and temperature.