Garlic on an Autumn Morning

Now that it's November, and the risk of scaring off any Halloween vampires has passed, I took advantage of my extra hour (given the fact that I forgot to change the clocks until after I woke up this morning) to finally plant our garlic. If all goes well, we should get about 70 heads of garlic come sometime around July. We ordered two varieties of organically grown garlic - Transylvanian and Romanian Red - however the Transylvanian was back ordered and then replaced with Russian Red Toch. Romanian Red is an heirloom hardneck porcelain variety, which should have large cloves and a strong flavor, and should store very well. Russian Red Toch is a softneck artichoke variety which should have small to medium cloves, a flavor mild enough to enjoy raw, be ready to harvest early, and be able to be stored for 5 to 6 months. My big hope now is that the squirrels don't dig up all the cloves before the ground freezes. You wouldn't think they'd be interested, but they've been eating everything from pumpkins to jalapenos, so I wouldn't put it past them. I've never planted anything this late in the year before, but I have to say that I really enjoyed having one last chance to get outside and put my hands in the cool dirt before winter. Soon enough there will be snow on the ground and we'll be knee deep in seed catalogs planning for next year!