As promised I went out to the garden this week to check on the garlic we planted this fall.  I was pleasantly surprised, after pulling back the straw I discovered sprouts!

Here’s another shot of three sprouts in a row.  It took me a minute to figure out this was actually the garlic, I’m guessing it is a white sprout instead of green because we had it covered in straw to protect the garlic from the cold.

We planted a cover crop mixture provided by our community garden, I believe it is hairy vetch and a couple of other types.

Jacob had a good time getting outside and exploring.

He is looking so big compared to pictures I took of him last summer!

Back in September we wrapped up our garden activities, took down our drip system for winter storage, and cleaned up our garden.  We also planted some garlic cloves to overwinter in the hopes that this summer we will have fresh garlic.  We found The Garlic Store, an online store based out of Fort Collins, Colorado that grows organic garlic for replanting along with fresh garlic for eating, garlic salsas, and other garlic gifts.   We tried their sampler pack this year to see what grows well in our garden and try a few different varieties.  The sampler included eight varieties, and I can’t remember all of them off the top of my head, but here is what I do remember: Polish White, Inchelium Red, Chesnock Red, Elephant Garlic (which is not really garlic at all but related to leeks), and Persian Star.

We have been cooking a lot this year due to all of our food issues, and garlic seems to be in almost every meal, so we are really excited about the possibility of growing our own.  We have read that garlic is highly adaptive to your own garden, so if you take the garlic you’ve grown and replant the biggest cloves each year, they will adapt to the micro-climate in your own garden and grow easier and better every year.

I am a little worried that the garlic hasn’t been getting enough water.  Our community garden turned off the water in October.  But we mulched it with straw after we planted it in September, and hopefully the snow and mulch will be enough to keep the garlic moist.  I need to go over to the garden and check on it to see if we have any sprouts yet, we’ll keep you updated with pictures when we do.

Has anybody either eaten or planted heirloom garlic?  Any tips for planting, or favorite varieties?