- So it turns out I have a problem.
Now this is a problem
that I'm sure every single person watching has hit
at some point in their lives,
and that is you bought too much of something
and you have nowhere to put it.
So maybe too many seeds, too many starts,
too much blah, blah, blah.
In this case it's garlic, and garlic to me is so important.
The problem is I probably bought,
oh man, something like 10 pounds of garlic seed,
which is a lot,
probably equivalent of 600 heads if I had to guess.
And the other problem is
that I don't have any more space for garlic.
This bed here is already fully planted out
with my hardnecks.
I have a small softneck bed in the other garden.
But between those two it's probably only
like 200 heads of garlic, and I need 400 at least.
When a recipe says one to two cloves,
I usually put a whole head.
So I have garlic problems in many different ways,
but first we need to find space
to actually plant all this garlic in.
And to do that we're going to actually reopen
an area of my garden that I haven't used in a long time,
and we're going to do it
entirely using just this old potato fork
that I bought at a thrift sale.
So let's go pop over to the front yard and make some space.
So we are now in the front yard
and we are looking at this particular spot
to grow the garlic in.
This is my front yard that's facing the street,
and so I don't really like hanging out here too much,
but something like garlic is a slow, long grower.
I could put it out here and basically set it and forget it.
So if you've watched my channel for a while
you've probably seen this bed in some shape or form before.
I grew corn here before, I've had sunflowers here before,
and even grew garlic here once before.
But as we went into summer this year,
I actually decided not to use this bed at all,
and the reason why is because of all the water restrictions
and the lack of water.
So I've let this entirely dry out.
This is now essentially dead soil.
Even after the rains, it's still bone dry.
So that's why we grabbed this tool here.
We're gonna use this potato fork
to sort of rough up the surface,
and we're going to re-amend
and plant this out entirely with garlic.
Just to set the stage, this is probably gonna be a two-day,
actually, for sure it's gonna be a two-day process
because today we're gonna be working on the soil,
but then overnight we're gonna let it rehydrate,
and tomorrow we'll plant it out.
So currently as it stands all I really have here
is this old coco coir chunk sort of mulch
and some compost that I spread in the last year.
So previously I also had three artichokes over there,
which I don't think are alive anymore,
even though they're perennial,
because I haven't watered this in literally a year.
So I would be shocked if anything was still alive,
except for that yarrow which is definitely hanging in.
So what we're gonna do with this potato fork right now
is loosen up the surface of the soil as much as we can.
What we're trying to do is create as much surface area
as we could possibly get
so that when I turn on the sprinkler here
as much of that water will actually sink into the earth
instead of just flowing off the surface.
So that was a nice little workout.
I love doing tasks like this in the garden
because they just, you know, fulfill that need for exercise
that everyone has.
And this simple little potato fork
just did a number on this bed.
All I did is basically till essentially the top,
I don't know, maybe four to six inches of soil here.
And let me just say this really quickly
is I love the low-till methods or no-till
and I employ it throughout my garden very successfully,
but when you have an area that's this dry,
throwing compost on top
and trying to water it in is just not gonna work.
You're gonna end up with a hydrophobic layer.
It's gonna cause all sorts of nasty problems
that are gonna be really frustrating to figure out
for a long time.
So what's the solution?
Well, the solution in this case is that I'm just tilling
that top layer.
And by using something like this
I'm not even really tilling,
I'm sort of just breaking it up and dragging the pieces up.
Every time I swung this
what I did is I impacted and then I pulled it towards me.
So I'm not really necessarily homogenizing everything.
I'm more like overturning that top layer.
So here's a close-up of the area
that we just worked over with the potato fork,
and I'm gonna bring you down low
and you can see just how much topography I've created here.
There's all these ridges, hills, and little valleys,
and what that's going to allow
is give the water somewhere to pull up.
If you didn't do this and you sprayed it with water,
it's gonna be hydrophobic and repel the water,
and all that water's just gonna run off
into these plants here.
So by doing this, we've created all these little wells,
and then I'll let the water infiltrate slowly
into the pore space below
and it's just gonna make life so much easier.
To accomplish this we're going to use
this little sprinkler set-up from Hoselink.
It has all these different patterns,
and I really like the center one here.
So I'm gonna just attach to the hose and I'll let it rip
and show you exactly what that looks like.
(cheerful music)
The water has now been on for 30 minutes,
so let's take a quick look over here
to see if it's actually working.
You could see by that dust that it is indeed still dry.
And that's what I was talking about earlier
when I said that it takes a lot of water
to actually get something wet
once it's been fully dry like this.
And the nice thing is at least we don't see
many major pools, like no major pools of water forming,
which means that the water is actually soaking
into the earth, which is exactly what we want.
I'll see you guys tomorrow
and we'll see if the soil actually got wet,
and then we can get ready for some garlic planting.
(cheerful music)
Welcome back. It is day two of our rehabbing this bed.
And the sprinkler has now run
for about three hours in total,
so let's take a closer look at some of the soil here
see how we're doing.
And it looks like in general it has begun to get wet
all the way through.
So I think at this stage, given the fact
that I'm going to be putting irrigation here anyway,
this is wet enough to get started.
So I think we can move on to the next step
of rehabbing this bed.
Now we have the watering done for now,
and we could actually focus on amending
and building this bed out properly for garlic.
So I'm gonna go grab some amendments
and a wheelbarrow or two of compost
and we'll start shaping this up.
One of the mistakes I made previously
when I planted garlic out of my garden
in that garlic-planting video
was that I set up the bed entirely and then planted garlic,
where in reality what I should be doing
is actually building out furrows for the garlic
and then covering it with compost.
That way I don't have to dibble through
a bunch of compost and soil.
I could just lay my garlic down and bury it in compost,
and that's it.
So I'm gonna go ahead and make a couple furrows here.
I'm gonna just be really rough with this.
I'm not gonna be exact on this bed at all.
I'm basically gonna do this as an experiment
to see how little I could get away with
in terms of measuring and prepping.
I'm usually a little bit over the top on that.
So in this case I'm just gonna go ahead
and try to pull a few rows
that are, I don't know, maybe six inches apart,
hopefully closer to eight.
We'll see what happens.
(upbeat music)
In terms of amending the soil,
I'm gonna go with the Espoma Bio-tone Starter.
This is a great fertilizer for an area of your garden
that's maybe neglected or has been left to die.
It has a little bit more of those beneficials
that'll help populate your soil and help build great soil.
So in this case, since I abandoned this whole garden
for basically a year, I wanna make sure
that I give it everything that I can to ensure its success.
Now you don't wanna just blindly add fertilizer,
but in this case I know that I've never added any fertilizer
to this bed since I've been growing in it.
But after we get the garlic in,
we'll go ahead and cover it all with some compost.
And between the Espoma Bio-tone and the compost
we should be really well covered
for a really fantastic garlic crop.
Here's a view of the furrows as it stands.
So I think I got about six of these guys
with the fertilizer in it.
So now let's go ahead and crack some garlic.
First I'll address the fact
that I've been walking on this bed.
I'm not that worried about it, honestly.
Since I'm doing this as a low-till style
and I'm going to have garlic in here for six months,
I'm not that worried that it's going to have a problem
dealing with any minor compaction over that time period.
But with that being said,
let's get into the garlic varieties.
This is from Burns Blossom Farm.
I actually follow them on Instagram,
which is how I saw that they were selling this garlic.
And they got me really excited
because they listed this as their desert island garlic.
Now I know I'm gonna pronounce this wrong,
Aglio, Aglio Rosso garlic seed.
I'm only 1% Italian, so, you know, don't blame me.
But let's get into actually breaking this out.
This particular garlic was actually described
as being their favorite in terms of flavor,
and you know I'm all about bringing the flavor.
That's what I'm growing for.
If I'm growing something
it's 'cause I want it to be really delicious.
The other reason why I decided to go with these guys
in particular is they're actually in California.
So far I don't think I've ever planted garlic
with seed that was produced in California.
So I'm hoping that that will give me
a little bit of an advantage here
because it'll be more similar to my climate.
They're up in Chico.
Obviously it gets a little colder there,
but I think it's still going to be better
than something, say, grown in Washington or Idaho,
anything like that.
So man, it's really a beautiful garlic.
I could see why it's called Rosso
'cause it has this really nice reddish hue to it.
Let me bring you in a little closer to see that.
So there's a little close-up shot of these guys.
I'll probably end up planting everything
but these small ones here.
These I will set aside
and probably eat them for dinner tonight.
I'm only gonna plant the best of the best
since I have a limited amount of space left.
And I'm actually gonna go ahead
and put all these tiny cloves in my back pocket,
so hopefully I remember that
before I throw these in the wash.
But this is kind of to prove to me
that maybe I don't need to overthink everything so much.
I'm just making some trenches in the ground
and I'm just popping some cloves right into the ground,
and that's it.
I'm not doing anything special.
I'm not dibbling them.
I'm not pre-soaking or anything like that.
I'm just gonna keep it very raw here, keep it very basic,
and just see if maybe I'm just wasting my time
by doing all the other stuff.
Of course I can't get a true comparison
because I don't have a control,
but either way, if I get a great garlic crop out of this
I'm probably not gonna bother with all those extra steps
that I usually do.
So I'm gonna go ahead and plant this row out,
and then we'll get to the next variety.
(upbeat music)
Gotta say so far I'm really impressed
by the quality of this garlic.
I haven't seen any disease or anything like that.
Every single clove is really nice and plump and firm.
Doesn't feel like it's been sitting for too long.
So I'm actually really excited for this now,
not just for the flavor,
but 'cause of how healthy this garlic looks.
The next variety up is called Blossom.
Now I believe Blossom, if I remember correctly,
is a turban-style garlic, I might be wrong,
but that is the type of garlic that generally will produce
a lot faster.
It has a shorter days to maturity.
So in this case these cloves are all looking really good,
and actually they're starting to sprout a little bit,
so that's perfect.
Let's go ahead and get these in the ground.
This might be too loose of an experiment
to call it an experiment, but I am interested
in doing more of these kind of experiments
where I really try to think about why I'm doing something
and whether it's worth doing it a certain way or another.
So in this case I'm testing
whether the spacing really matters,
whether all the preparation really matters.
But I would like to do more of these experiments
in the future.
So if you guys can think of anything
you guys want me to test,
or if you guys just wanna see that more in general,
just go ahead and drop it in the comments
and I'll try to make that a focus
to capture more actual experiments
rather than this kind of loose higgledy-piggledy experiment.
Put these guys in the other pocket
so I know which one tastes like what.
Actually, let me bring you in a little closer here
just to show you.
This is the sprouting side of the garlic here,
so it's already growing.
That's totally fine to plant and it's actually just means
that you know this garlic is going to grow.
Now the thing to consider though
is that when you put this in the ground,
gotta be really careful not to break this in any stage
because if this breaks
it's probably not gonna grow any garlic.
So I'm gonna go ahead and plant that anyway,
but I'm gonna just try to be really careful about it.
So this is the last variety that we're planting today.
This is called Georgian Fire.
Now when it says Georgian,
it's not talking about the state Georgia.
It's actually referring to the country.
And there's actually quite a bit of garlic varieties
from Georgia tend to have a really strong flavor.
They also tend to be very beautiful garlic.
Let's take a look at this guy.
So first of all, this is a hardneck.
It's got a very stiff center part here.
Gonna go ahead and crack that out.
And the cloves aren't actually
anything particularly interesting,
but we're gonna plant two rows of this
'cause I have a friend from Georgia.
I wanna give him a little surprise gift in the spring.
(wistful music)
Now we have the six rows of garlic planted out
and I'm going to go through and start burying it
from the hillsides that we kind of dug up
to make these furrows.
So what I mean is I'm just gonna come by
and sort of push the soil together
everywhere where I dig it up
to give it that first initial burying.
Then we're gonna come through after
and bury it entirely in compost.
I have to admit, that felt pretty weird.
I feel like I definitely didn't plant it deep enough,
but we'll see, this is the experiment.
As I mentioned, the only thing left to do here
is now bury all this garlic.
So this is a nice finish compost.
Gonna go ahead and probably do two,
maybe three wheelbarrows,
and then I'll come back with some mulch.
But we'll do the irrigation in a future video
when I finally work on the full irrigation for my homestead.
'Til then, I'll see you guys next time.
(wistful music)