The Best Laid Plans of Garlic Farmers

The original 2013 garlic crop plan, with all its charts and spreadsheets, had us planting in October and finishing a few weeks before Thanksgiving. It was a good plan.

But that's not how it turned out. Life, health, weather and day jobs threw us a few curves. We started planting almost a month later than anticipated. As a result, we're still planting garlic. In December.

Peeling and preparing big cloves of Music garlic for planting. 

That definitely was not the plan.

If there's one thing farming teaches, it's that things don't always go according to plan.  Weather patterns change; suddenly the forecast turns from sunny to a week-long deluge. Unexpected pests or crop diseases decimate what had otherwise should have been a banner year. Ask some of the Midwestern garlic growers who got hit in 2012 with aster yellows disease.  They'll tell you: There's always something unexpected.

Chesnok Red, still viable and ready for planting.

But farming also teaches the need to keep things in perspective. Plans change. You control for as much as you can. You go with the flow. And most of the time, it all works. Perhaps not as you'd planned, but it works.

So far, that seems to be what's happening with this year's planting season. The garlic seed, for example, remained viable for planting even though it was harvested six to seven months ago. We've got 20 heirloom garlic varieties in the ground; just a few more to go, and we're done. (Yet another instance of plans not going according to schedule: Last week we were within a few hours of being finished. Then it started to rain heavily, a whole day ahead of predictions. And it's still raining. The fields will have to dry out before planting can resume.)

By the time planting's finished, there should around 15,000 cloves of garlic in the ground. That's more than twice the amount we grew last year. Red Janice, Belarus and others have already sending up green shoots. The rest should follow soon since November and December have had more than their fair share of days over 50 degrees.

So things didn't go according to plan. It's okay.