The hardneck garlic got a lot of loving in the last month. We removed the straw mulch, and layered the whole bed with compost. And now, the waiting.

Garlic is a simple-yet-complicated crop. There is conflicting advice out there — pretty much everywhere. My go-to source, the lovely Edward C. Smith, author of The Vegetable Gardener’s Bible, says not to water it at all, except in cases of extreme drought. Stanley Crawford, author of A Garlic Testament, indicates that garlic is a heavy feeder that prefers a lot of water. I have done best when I have followed Mr. Smith’s advice to the letter. Unfortunately, my reading comprehension skills have plummeted since the dawn of the Internets, and I have not always done so.

The very first year we grew hardneck garlic, it was a snap. I was so awed by the idea of sowing something in autumn, when I tend to get melancholy over the passing of another growing season (and in anticipation of a cold winter). Hardneck garlic, which goes into the ground in late fall (It can go in earlier in the fall, but such is my timetable.), holds the promise of planting in the sweet late afternoon light on a chilly fall day, just as we’re closing down Victory Farms for the season. It is my last dance with my earthworm-y friends; a parting glance at the wrigglers that I hope will survive the long hard winter ahead. And, it is an optimistic look ahead — that we will all make it through the snowy season, in tact and ready to realize our potential. Each year, we wind up chasing the last bits of daylight, while depositing neatly peeled cloves in cool pockets of freshly tilled soil, pressing them into their wintery graves (or wombs, really) with dirty thumbs that grow numb as we make our way down the bitter rows. The entire bed is mulched with a deep, lofty bed of straw and watered well. Without fail, it snows within days — just to give you an example of how long we wait to close up shop for the season.

Back to the reading comprehension part, to my own aghast, in the years that followed us following Mr. Smith’s easy-to-follow advice, I did the unthinkable. I didn’t read his instructions all the way through. Come each spring, when we were (Clearly!) instructed to un-mulch the beds of their straw and lay down compost, I didn’t heed his instructions all the way through. For several seasons, I did un-mulch the straw, and I did mulch with a compost. And then I, inexplicably (and painstakingly!) re-mulched the bed with the straw. And, I watered heavily.

The result was moldy, weird, tiny heads of garlic. Some of it proved salvageable, after extensive drying (and losing a few cloves). However, the more we watered, the more we lost. And, in an unforgivable maneuver, rather than follow Mr. Smith’s advice to save cloves from what we grew and then resowing them so they could become accustomed to our soil, I continued to throw hundreds of dollars away on seed garlic. This wasn’t truly problematic until the fall of 2011, when urban gardening boomed, and I neglected to place my seed garlic order in a timely fashion. I found myself shut out of nearly all available garlic. I scrounged up what I could, but it arrived already-moldy and in sorry shape. The 2012 crop would have been a total bust had I not planted so, so much.

I didn’t repeat all the mistakes of the past last season, but, still, I overwatered, and the very finest garlic we harvested was from our bed at the community garden. You may ask why someone with 3,000 square feet of microfarm would maintain a bed at a community garden (Insanity is a good guess!). The answer, really, lies with the quality of our garlic that grows there. Inexplicably, no matter how much we ignore it, the hardneck garlic we plant at the  community garden bed vastly outperforms that which we plant in our own beds. Go figure.

At any rate, this year, I’ve pledged to get it right, and so far (Knock wood!), I have. I un-mulched the long row that we carefully (and belatedly) sowed until dusk in November by mid-May, and I covered the bed with a healthy layer of compost. I did not re-mulch it with straw, and I did ignore it, giving it only miserly doses of water when we went without rain for long stretches. So far, so good. Over at the community garden, things are peachy, as well, despite completely ignoring the garlic. I haven’t watered it once, despite near-drought conditions. And only today did we un-mulch the straw and compost it, prompted by an irate email from the garden manager about weeds (For some reason, dill weed was all over our bed!).

I hope to see scapes springing to life soon, although the Spanish Rioja (a type of rocambole garlic) wasn’t exactly prolific in the scapes department last season. Thankfully, we still harvested enough to make garlic scape pesto to last a year (Seriously, I still have some left. Check back for my awesome recipes!).

So, my fellow hardneck garlic growers — heed the words of Edward C. Smith. Plant late fall and mulch with straw. Un-mulch in spring and mulch with compost. Do NOT re-mulch with straw. Do not overwater. Or, you will not pass go, and you will not collect a million (or so) heads of hardneck garlic. Until early July, when we typically harvest, I will breathe. And, after that, I hope to have garlic breath for the year ahead.