One of the traditions on the farm is planting garlic in October. We actually started growing garlic on the farm before we owned the property. We grew garlic with the previous owner. We have continued the tradition every since.
We plant garlic in Oct and really don’t do much with it until spring. Once spring arrives, the weeds come with the warm weather and it is time to weed the garlic.
Garlic Available
We have almost sold out of this year’s garlic. We have maybe 2-3 lbs left. It is available in the store. We hope to have more garlic available in July 2025.
Back to the Planting
This year we planted garlic in a new location. We work hard to minimize how much we till the soil, as part of building better soil on the property. The soil in this area did require tilling the beds prior to planting the garlic. We planted over 800 garlic starts.
Once the garlic was planted and covered with soil, we covered the bed with hay. The hay was cut from the back field on our property. Using the hay is an example of function stacking. The hay helps in several areas. As the hay breaks down it adds nutrients and orgranic matter to the soil. The hay also supresses weeds. The garlic beds won’t need any significant weeding until March.
Woolly Worms
We saw lots of woolly worms. Here are some pictures
I’m a mechanical engineer turned weekend farmer, so I’m just smart enough to know that there is a lot that I don’t know especially when it comes to farming, permaculture and food forests. I’ve been heavily influenced in my love of farming and permaculture by my Mom and Dad and also by people like 
Connie has her certificate in Sustainable Agriculture from CCCC. She really enjoyed the classes at the community college and learned a lot. The program was a mixture of classes and work on the school farm. What she learned has really added to our technical proficiency on the farm.