the great garlic adventure

A week or two back the manthing declared he was going to become "THAT Crazy Garlic Guy" and by golly I think he is serious. All the beds up closer to the shack are going to be filled up even though we have about doubled the  bed space. This left us wondering where we could find space to  plant lots and lots of garlic and then it hit us that deer dont touch  garlic, birds don't eat garlic, garlic is shallow rooted, and it does not require full sun to grow.    

 Down in the holler, the wooded area is quite nicely laid out and largely unused. After looking around a bit it was decided that with a bit of clearing of undergrowth  we could put several large, partially shaded, beds in.  Garlic is supposed to be one of the better money making crops for small acreages and  while we don't need much money to survive, we need some.  Soooo,   We are hoping  to  have 25000 plants in within  5 years.  We currently have somewhere between 1500 and 1600 bulbs in  and we will continue to grow the stock  over  the next several months for fall  planting.

So, we began cleaning up the woods a few days ago. Hauling dead fall out of the way, pulling small pines, and taking out a few trees for  firewood.  I completely neglected taking pictures of  the area before but here are a couple showing the first section we are working on.   Once this is done we will  mark out the area a bit better and rake the woods to begin mulching and building soil a bit.  Hopefully by this fall we will  be  planting down there on on our way  to  the manthing becoming THAT Crazy Garlic Guy.