We Planted 1,000 Cloves of Garlic

Last October, we planted over 1,000 cloves of garlic in our garden. Look at how much it has grown!

This garlic has its origins in five heads of garlic that our friends, Dan and Debbie, gave us from their garden a few years ago.  After receiving their gift, I broke apart the 5 heads and planted each clove in the garden. I think there were about 25 or 30 cloves back then.  

The following year, I harvested that garlic and the flowers on top.  The flowers yielded thousands of tiny bulbils.  There were so many bulbils that I got tired of planting them and just broadcasted them across a patch of dirt.  I'm not sure how many grew, but it was an abundant harvest of small cloves of garlic.  Some I just left out there, and they are continuing to grow. So then, last October, I planted as many of them as I had time (over 1,000 cloves) into the garden once again. 

So, I took 5 heads and turned them into a thousand heads of garlic in 3 years. This is nature's bounty. With patience, you can multiply your harvest a thousand times!

I'm not even sure why I'm growing so much garlic. I guess because it's so easy to grow and an interesting experiment to see what can be done.  Garlic requires little watering and hardly any effort to take care of.  I mulch around the plants to keep the watering to a minimum.