WHEN & WHERE:

Our garlic planting began, like the previous year, at the end of October. Oct 29th and 30th and a few hours on Oct 31st, to be precise

We planted a one acre field next door to our previous year's field.

GARLIC QUANTITY & VARIETY:

45,000 cloves - 6 different varieties: Creme de La Rasa (marble purple stripe), Kostyn's Red (marble purple stripe), Tibetan (purple stripe), Yugoslavian (Porcelain), Chesnok (purple stripe) and our very own variety that we have name the Shuswap Delight to honour the region where we live and farm. It's a lovely porcelain variety which we hope to add to the market as seed garlic in 2018!

HOW WE PLANTED:

About a week prior to planting we popped all the garlic by hand with a crew of 5. Boy that was a task...it is hard on the hands after a couple hours, so prep well for the popping phase - give yourself plenty of time and gather a good crew. For planting, we had a crew of about 7 people - we planted the majority of the rows in 2 days in fair conditions. There was very little sun on the field but the temperatures were mild until after 5pm - so we made sure to wrap it up soon after.

HOW LONG:

it took us 2 full days and about 2 hours or so with only 3 people the next day.

re Details & Field notes:

1. Dimpler

Our dimpler is made from a 45 gallon steel drum and has 7 spokes/row made of rebar. The spokes are spaced about 6 inches apart.

2. Fertilizer and Mulch

We used composted poultry manure from Corfe's Farms in Armstrong on a suggestion by Jim at RCF. This year we brought in 30 metre load to cover approximately one acre.

3. Rows

We have 11 Rows total on a one acre field. Each row is 3 feet wide and we have 2.5 feet between rows - Each row has approximately 600 spokes (Length wise) x 7 spokes -

Field Tips:

This year our only tip was to not burn out planters with long days in the field! we discovered that starting at 8 am means we have to stop at 5pm and not push it until 6pm. When we did push it we had a lot of sore workers and complaints the next day :)