Its fall and its garlic planting time!  Heres a pictorial summary of the planting process that we hope you find fun/useful. 

STEP ONE:  Breaking Soil
Though we'd prefer to use no-till methods for better soil health, we have a tough old hay field to work with, and unbroken sod.  Thus out comes the tractor and rototiller.  We are using a 30hp Kubota Tractor and a 5 foot Maschio Tiller to prepare our garlic beds.

STEP TWO: Popping Cloves
Next we get to sit around in the fall sunshine and pop garlic cloves.  Garlic bulbs need to be broken up into individual cloves for planting.  We select our seed from the larger bulbs from this year's garlic harvest.  Popping garlic cloves should not be underestimated - it takes nearly as long to pop a bulb as to plant a bulb!

STEP THREE: QUACK GRASS
The next step is to remove the big juicy quack grass (couch grass) from the tilled beds.  We compete to see who can find "the mother of all couch grasses". Sheniz, one of our farm volunteers is holding the current winner!  Ideally you would prepare and weed your garlic beds a lot earlier in the season - but we were short on time this year.   Removing the strong perennial weeds at this time of year is a lot easier than fighting with them in the spring, when the tender young garlic shoots are emerging.

STEP FOUR: On your mark, stop & drop 
Next we use our friend David's makeshift garlic hole marker to space out the grid pattern of where we will drop each clove - the holes are spaced 6 inches apart! Then another person comes along behind the hole marker person and drops garlic cloves in each hole.  Our 2.5 foot beds held four cloves across this year - or about 8 cloves per foot of bed space.

STEP FIVE: DIGGIN IT! 
Then, we get to dig it.  Using a little trowel, we move up the row and plant each clove about 4-5 inches deep.  (see the marker and clove dropper in the background) The deeper the better in this climate, as freeze-thaw can cause havoc with your crop, and shallow planted seeds are more susceptible to weather extremes. 
NOTE:  Fertility & Irrigation:  We also fertilised (with organic compost & soft rock phosphate) and lay our drip irrigation lines as we plant, before we mulch. 

STEP SIX: Putting it to Bed
That means mulch - nice thick layers of it.  It'll come in handy in the spring to keep the weeds back and keep the ground moist.  It also reduces freeze thaw extremes in the winter.  Ideal mulch would be straw, or something without lots of seeds in it.  We used our neighbour's organic 'rained on' hay that he can't feed to his animals.   When laying mulch, thickness will always depend on what you're using and how dense its packed - so I ask the question : Would a weed still grow easily under this much mulch?  If the answer is yes, I put on more.  

Lastly, it is very imporant to... CELEBRATE!!!!
Thanks to all our farm volunteers over the entire season!  See you next year!  (and thanks for the cinnamon buns Cory!)