rainbowgardener wrote:You don't bury your garlic cloves? I've always planted mine with the base about an inch down, meaning the top is just a little below the surface. I don't know that that is "right;" it's just what I read to do when I started growing garlic and it has worked for me.
I tried it both ways and it doesn't seem to make any difference. One year I tried several experiments in the same garlic bed some cloves were under the soil, some were half way down like these, some were half way down covered with sand, come half way down covered with straw, some were half way down covered with dead grass and sticks I picked up from the yard, some half way down covered with peat moss. They all did good.
One year I built an 8" tall solar box covered with a double glass patio door it did the best the sun warmed it up every day even on days when it was 20 degrees and snow, the thermometer in the hot bed said it was 70 degrees F inside. Garlic tried to grow tall but grew up against the glass so the next year I built another solar hot bed 18" tall. It was so strange to look out the kitchen window and see something green growing in the snow. This solar hot bed works good with cold weather plants like broccoli, carrots, beets, etc. That was 30 years ago when I was young and has lots of energy. I think a lot of what works best for each of us has to do with your climate and your soil.