Seeding for the 2025 season

2024 Garlic Seed Planting and Mulching Process

This year, we planted a total of 1,800 garlic cloves, including:

• 800 Russian Red
• 700 Music (Porcelain)
• 245 Mexican
• 60 Rocambole

We decided to plant more Mexican garlic this year and slightly reduced the Rocambole variety. The Mexican garlic has smaller cloves that offer a unique taste and are closer in size to what many recipes suggest, making them great for culinary use. Our seed garlic was of excellent quality, carefully handpicked from our best bulbs. We selected only the largest and most well-shaped cloves to ensure a successful planting.

The Planting Process

Our process began with preparing the seed cloves. Below are some photos that document our 2024 garlic planting journey:

Seed Cloves Preparation

We started by hand-picking the large, well-shaped cloves from our best bulbs. Here's a look at the two 5-gallon pails filled with the seed cloves, ready for planting:

Russian Red Garlic Cloves

A closer view of our Russian Red garlic cloves, which were selected from our best bulbs for planting:

Garlic Plot Preparation

Once the seed cloves were ready, we prepared the planting plot. We dug the holes for each clove and laid them out in the soil. Here’s a view of the plot with the holes dug and ready for planting:

Planting the Cloves

The next step was placing the seed cloves in the holes, ready to be pushed into the soil. Here's a snapshot of the cloves in position, awaiting final placement:

Covering the Cloves

After the cloves were planted, we covered them with soil. The photo below shows the plot after this step, right before we added mulch:

Mulching the Plot

Finally, we mulched the entire plot with wheat straw to protect the cloves over the winter. Here’s a look at the fully mulched plot:

We're excited for what this season will bring, especially with such excellent seed garlic to start with. Stay tuned for updates as the garlic grows!