If at first you don't succeed, try something else

In the words of my favorite wizard, Harry Dresden, if you have one problem, all you have is a problem. But if you have two problems, you may also have an opportunity, because one problem can sometimes provide a solution to the other. A case in point: two failed crops in our garden.

I've already told you about how our attempt to grow potatoes in our old rain barrel was an abject failure, producing only a literal handful of potatoes. But that wasn't the only crop that gave us a very disappointing harvest this year. Of the 30 cloves of garlic we put in the ground last fall, only six grew into garlic heads—and pretty small ones at that, with only four to five good-sized cloves each. As with the potatoes, the total weight of the harvest was probably less than the amount we planted.

Frustrated by this failure, I checked out an article in Mother Earth News on garlic growing, looking for some pointers that might improve our results next year. And the one piece of advice that jumped out at me was, "Plant in crumbly, light soil that drains well and that is high in organic matter." Our rich, heavy clay soil does not, by any stretch of the imagination, fit that definition—which might explain why even in a good year, our garlic harvest comes to only around 25 small heads. 

However. we did happen to have some soil sitting around that fit the description perfectly: the mix of bagged topsoil and aged manure in which we'd attempted to grow the potatoes. Brian had originally intended to dump this out into the garden beds to add more organic matter to the soil, which has grown compacted over the years. But after reading the Mother Earth News article, we thought, well, why not try repurposing the potato barrel as a garlic barrel? Growing garlic in a container would also prevent groundhogs romping through the crop and crushing all the scapes, so it could remedy two problems at once.

The Mother Earth News article recommended planting garlic cloves 2 to 4 inches deep, 4 to 6 inches apart, in rows 12 inches apart. Trying to figure out how to adapt this spacing to a round barrel about two feet in diameter, I looked up "grow garlic in containers" and found an article in The Spruce that said putting them "at least 3 inches apart" would be sufficient. Working my way around the edge of the barrel and spiraling into the middle, I was able to fit in a total of 20 cloves. Since the soil was so light, I didn't bother digging holes for them; I just pushed them in with my fingers until they were about 2 inches deep.

The Mother Earth News article recommended mulching the garlic with "several inches of leaves or straw" to protect it from the winter cold. We don't have enough leaves in our yard yet to cover it that deep, but I added one layer, and I'll continue adding more as fall progresses. I left the lid off the barrel to let rain in; if we don't get much rain, I'll water by hand to "keep the soil moist but not soggy," as The Spruce recommends. In the spring, we'll pull the leaves off and give the barrel an extra top-dressing of compost. And in the fall, we'll see if this container-grown garlic yields a better crop than what we planted in the ground this year. One thing we know for sure: it can't be much worse.