Fall; time to prepare. Gardens & greenhouses cleaned up, tilled and replanted. Compost pile loves this time of year.
We have been asked about garlic many times because we used to grow great garlic and Sarom would weave them together for more beautiful art food. Unfortunately two autumns ago we could not get the garlic into the ground as it was so wet on the fields. We waited and waited until there was snow on the ground. But the ground was mush. Maybe we made a mistake but were planted the garlic bulbs, over 6,000 of them.
Come spring and nothing was coming up. It took us 10 years to grow that garlic supply. Gone in one season. So we try again to build it back up. We have decided not to use our neighbors fields but to try to get more control by having the plants close by to attend to them. We added year old horse manure and ashes to the soil, tilled it, planted the garlic in three different places, and covered with straw. Three kinds; Elephant garlic, Korean red, & Forestville red. Hoping for the best. It’s going to take a few more years to build it up to where it was before and we can sell garlic once again.
“The ultimate goal of farming is not the growing of crops, but the cultivation and perfection of human beings.” Masanobu Fukuoka