Garlic & Leeks

This past November, I planted garlic in one of my new lasagna beds. 

It's finally breaking through the soil's surface. 

I bought the "Music" variety from Seed Savers, because gardening brings out my romantic side. 

It even makes me laugh at myself, but it's true. 

I want to know what "musical" garlic tastes like.

"Italian variety brought to Canada by Al Music in the 1980s from his homeland. Bright white bulbs with a hint of pink and brown on clove skins. Large cloves are easy to peel. Rich, sweet, and caramelly when roasted. Delicious and spicy raw flavor. Hardneck, 4-6 cloves per bulb." - the catalog description from Seed Savers

I had eyed and circled the bed, and then unhurriedly pressed each clove where I sensed it had the best chance to thrive. I had to fight off the desire to chastise myself for not measuring and marking. Then I read this week in Elizabeth Anna Samudio's beautiful work The Unconventional Edible Garden that:

"Intuitive gardening goes beyond textbook gardening and is instead built on the foundation of our inherited relationship to the earth and the earth's creator." 

I'm deeply moved by this perspective. It's wonderfully freeing. When I began gardening 5 years ago, I approached it as I've tended to approach much of life - by the book. And I was quickly frustrated when perfect vegetables didn't emerge from my best attempts at perfect gardening. In fact, it was Elizabeth that I went to when I found my pitiful seedlings covered in flea beetles that first spring.

I was a stranger to her, but her reputation as an organic farmer-gardener had been repeatedly praised in my presence. She personified restorative agriculture long before I ever heard the phrase. She asked me what my soil was like, and I answered back with the exact soil mix I'd created using a formula from a well-known gardening book. She looked more than a little exasperated and proceeded to quite literally take me back to ground zero. The brief exchange did not contain the advice I'd expected or even wanted. But like a train switching tracks, she shifted my gardening path in a life-giving direction.

Incidentally, she also taught me how to correctly pronounce "humus," instead of "hummus." She was very matter-of-fact about it and moved right along, but I was more than a little embarrassed. I'm better all around for the healthy dose of humility she gave me that day.

As I began to build lasagna-style beds this fall, I loosely followed the sheet mulch plan from Toby Hemenway's Gaia's Garden: A Guide to Home-Scale Permaculture. I also referred quite a lot to Patricia Lanza's Lasagna Gardening book. I took a lot of liberties and made each of my beds a little differently. Building soil is a pretty fascinating endeavor...

Despite a lingering sense that I should allow the freshly laid soil layers to "cook" for a season, I went ahead and planted in most of the beds (both seeds and transplants). My internal compromise is that I will hold my expectations for harvest loosely. After all, I did plant in November of all times.

So many things die with a freeze. The peas I planted all around this garlic might actually survive, but they are terribly shriveled and more than a little offended by the sudden arctic blast that came our way (finally) right before Christmas.

But I knew I would find the garlic rising up out of the ground like a victorious song.

I also experimented with leeks this week. A friend cooked some amazing leeky-meatballs over the holidays, and gave me her leftover cuttings. I watched a video about how to re-grow them, and then did my own version of the instructions. They sat in about an inch of water for a few days. Then, I put them in a sunny window for a day or two. And this morning, I found the faint greenish glow in the center had become the beginnings of a new plant.

So I pushed them into the soil of my mostly dormant spiral garden.

I felt a bit like a squirrel. 

We'll see how they do.