Planting Garlic

We're late; a little late, anyway. In a perfect world, we would have planted the garlic at the beginning of the month, when the soil was a little warmer. But, that's life on a little farm; the potato harvest had to be finished, the tractor had to be changed over to the tiller and some maintenance done, then the garlic field had to be tilled. So, we're getting it done now! Will it ever be good to cross this one off the 'to-do' list! We needed an area where garlic and onions hadn't been planted for a few years; crop rotation, you know! We needed some room because we just haven't been able to keep up with the demand for our garlic, so we're planting almost double the amount this year. And, we are also going to plant some of the wee onions that we dug up during the onion harvest for tasty spring onions. We ordered our usual garlic, organic 'Magic' from Vesey's Seeds. What a treat when it all arrived already broken up into the cloves! And some absolutely gorgeous, monster cloves they were, too! We also ordered a couple of small parcels of organic specialty garlic from Botanus: French White Silverskin Softneck and Legacy Rocambole Hardneck. From CSA member Elaine, we received a bulb of Purple Mexican, so a nice variety for us to taste! Because we're a very cold climate, we're pushing in our cloves to 4 - 5 ", and we'll probably mulch the whole area with straw. I'm a little worried about soil erosion in the area we're planting, so the straw mulch will help. It's suppose to rain early next week, so that will be a good time to get down the straw. MMMmmm, all this talk about garlic, I think I'll roast some of this year's harvest for dinner tonight!