Last October I purchased a bulb of garlic from a friend of mine at the farmers market. She also does organic gardening so I knew it was a safe choice. I was wanting to try my luck at planting garlic and she told me that October is the time of year to get it going. I came home and carefully separated the cloves from the bulb and placed them one by one in the ground. Success! I planted a total of 8 cloves and 7 of them sprouted.
This summer the garlic scrapes were ready to be cut. Some of you might not be familiar with garlic scrapes. They are the green plant that grows above the ground. They look slightly similar to green onions. The cut scrapes were carried into the house and I was able to use them in several recipes as they taste just like garlic. The actual garlic bulbs were not harvested until this past September when they were finally ready. (almost a year after they were planted)
This week I took my 7 harvested garlic bulbs and replanted all but one of them. Each bulb usually contains an average of 5 to 7 cloves (give or take) which means I planted around 36 cloves of garlic. I'm hoping to expand my harvest every year. It will be interesting to see how many of them come up in the coming weeks. I'll be sure to let you know how they grow.