The Walden Effect: Farming, simple living, permaculture, and invention.

First garlic shoots

First garlic shootsThe first garlic shoots have slipped up through the leaves 19 days after going into the ground.  Already I can see a difference between the chunky shoots on this year's garlic and the spindly leaves which came up from the grocery store garlic I planted last year.

After my garlic failure this summer, I did some reading and learned that it's imperative to pick a garlic which is suited to your climate.  Not only that --- you should choose bulbs which were raised as close to you as possible since it can take multiple years for a variety which can grow in your region to acclimate if your specific bulbs were raised a few thousand miles away. 

So this time we covered our bases, choosing five varieties from Southern Exposure Seed Exchange which is at least in state, even if it is 300 miles away.  So far the results are promising, though as Mark noted we'll have to wait until we taste them all this summer to see if our experiment was a success.  For now, I'm enjoying watching fat garlic shoots reaching for the sky.



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About us: Anna Hess and Mark Hamilton spent over a decade living self-sufficiently in the mountains of Virginia before moving north to start over from scratch in the foothills of Ohio. They've experimented with permaculture, no-till gardening, trailersteading, home-based microbusinesses and much more, writing about their adventures in both blogs and books.



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