Gardeners are probably the only people excited to get a load of manure. Last month, our farmer neighbor was taking a short cut around our hayfield to drop equipment off on his back acreage and stopped to chat as Maggie and I were picking grapes. He mentioned he was going to be spreading manure on the hayfield, and we asked if he could spare a load for a couple of raised beds. Later that week, a couple of yards of composted manure was sitting by the beds we had constructed.
We had built a raised bed for asparagus in the summer. We used the logs from a red pine recently taken down to make a second bed for garlic. Garlic is one of the few plants put into the ground in the fall; in Wisconsin it is planted in late September to early October.
This weekend was probably the last nice weekend of the year, so we had to hustle to get the beds ready and garlic planted. We spent the better part of a day working on the beds. I used a mattock to remove the grass, and a broadfork to loosen the clayey soil in the garlic bed, followed by aged compose/manure that the farmer had dropped off in the spring. Garlic is a heavy feeder, so the composted manure should provide plenty of nutrients. We had already killed off the grass for the asparagus bed and Maggie had started to fill that bed with the newer manure, so I just had to finish topping the bed off. The manure will compost over the winter and be ready for asparagus crowns in the spring.
We wrapped up the project by making a template to space the garlic cloves, and got the last ones in as the sun started to set. Seven cloves per row, and about 20 rows in our 5 foot by 12 foot bed. Nestled into the rich compose, hopefully we will see plenty of garlic in 2021.
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