Sown: Garlic planted

I planted all of my garlic today. Halfway through, my neighbor came over to ask what all the plants in my garden were. We had a nice talk. I showed her how to plant garlic. She said I should soak my peppers in vinegar. I was leaning towards that in my next hot-sauce attempt. I’m not sure how long to soak them for. And speaking of tangents… Anyhoo, she’s very nice, but she says she’s too old to garden anymore and likes watching mine out the window. She says she likes it more than me. :) It’s so nice to hear after my other neighbors put up a fence to avoid having to see the squash.

After she left, I took a break. Not because I was tired, but because I decided to put the garlic, which needs to be in the ground almost a year, and which should be exceedingly low maintenance, in the most inconvenient part of my bed. I also did this companion planting thing to attract beneficials. Long story short, I really didn’t feel like squatting with my butt planted on a bee-filled marigold (there were about 5 bumble bees and 2 wasps and a 2 honeybees in that particular plant, and every time one left it was swapped out with another) while I accessed the part of the plot I couldn’t reach by bending over my mercifully bee-free beets. So I came back a few hours later and finished the job after they’d moved on.

Pictured, I have my planted garlic bed (which looks a lot like the bed before I planted it, only with fewer beets), a garlic bulb before planting (I’ve held it up so you can see the top and bottom. The flat bottom goes down, the pointy top goes up), and a trowel stuck in the ground where I’m putting garlic in. I planted my garlic 4 inches deep. The instructions said to plant it 4 inches deep in the north, 2 inches deep in the south, and 3 inches deep in the middle.