Do you use garlic much in your cooking?  I don’t because, first, I don’t cook and second, I don’t like strong scents.  So a little goes a looooong way for me!  And, although it has long been considered a way to ward off werewolves, vampires, and demons, I haven’t used it much for that either.

But if you need some garlic, John and Jackie have plenty at their new house.  The previous owners grew it in the raised beds around the house.  Which, by the way, is the preferred way to grow it.  Unfortunately, the garlic took over the beds and invaded every spare inch of the area around the house.  Which would be fine if you want to cook with a lot or have a vampire problem in your neighborhood.

But John and Jackie would prefer to have the garlic out of the landscaped beds so that they can plant what they want.  Jackie tried killing it with Round-up, Spectricide, and other less caustic methods, but the darn stuff just keeps growing.  So, whenever Tom and I have a couple of free hours – especially on nice days – you can find us at John and Jackie’s digging up bulbs.

Each bulb has 5 to 10 cloves.  Each of these cloves can become a new garlic bulb.  When you are digging up the bulb, you have to get all the cloves or else it just continues to grow and propagate.  In fact, garlic is one of the fastest spreading of all bulb plants.  Yippee!  The bulbs grow deep, so Tom and I are having to dig down about 12 inches before we can get the bulb.  It is a trade-off now between getting the bulbs out and not disturbing the soil and mulch we spent so long putting on the beds.  Well, it is better for all that stuff to be mixed in for good soil anyway.

Digging for garlic has become our new hobby.  We have spent nearly 60 hours between the two of us digging it up.  And that doesn’t add in all the hours Jackie has spent trying to get rid of it.  We are all very sick of garlic and probably won’t be using it in any cooking for quite a while.