I’ve grown garlic for almost as many years as I’ve lived in Maine. It’s one of those veggies that I consistently have good luck with.

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Last October, I planted just shy of 90 cloves in two of my hugelkulture beds where I grew cucumbers and pumpkins earlier in the season. Planting garlic in the hugelkultures was a first. When I harvested this weekend, I ended up with only 75 heads of garlic. The beds didn’t seem disturbed, so I’m not sure what happened to those missing cloves.

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Garlic harvest is one of my favorite times of the year in the garden. This year, I was rewarded with BIG garlic. I’m not sure if it was the hugelkulture, or magic chicken/duck poo compost, or the change of scenery, but my garlic like the new growing spot.

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The head on the left is typical of what my garden has yielded in the past. Yet this year, at least a third of my harvest looks like the head on the right. Big garlic.

I’m betting my money on the hugelkulture. Little does he know, Paul’s gonna be building me a new, bigger hugelkulture (or hugelbugel as we tend to call them) just for garlic planting this fall.