It’s a quick job to shred the leaves with the mower.
We always follow tomatoes with garlic. One of the few winter crops, it grows from Halloween to the July 4th harvest. After the tomato vines have been pulled out, we add our soil enhancers…
Shredded leaves ready to be added to coffee grounds and crab shell.
I get as much crab shell as I want from Tony’s Crab Shack in town. It’s only about 4 miles (6.4 km) round trip by bicycle, my transportation of choice.
All these things are trench composted into the soil along with kitchen garbage and the odd sunflower stem or comfrey leaves.
Smooth the soil level and hook the hose to water grid.
Break apart the garlic bulb into individual cloves…
Push garlic clove into soil about 3 inches deep, “hair” end down. This one should be pushed down a little more, but we were just posing it and wanted a ‘handle’ to pull it back out.
Garlic planted almost a month ago is just starting to show.
What is garlic good for? GOOD HEALTH and BEE STINGS!
Adventures in Natural Beekeeping 
I used to grow garlic back in the UK, planting in the autum just like you, but I’m worried about the extream winters over in Poland so I’ll probably hold off until the spring. It will be interesting to know who gets the earliest crop?
We have an ‘equable climate,’ never hot, never cold…and lots of rain (about 60 inches [1,500 millimeters) a year. If you have extreme winters, you probably have hot summers. I bet when you plant your garlic in the spring, it’ll grow fast. Why don’t you let me know when you harvest and we’ll see how the harvest time compares.
I was going to buy a shredder, but the lawn mower is an elegant solution.
I’m hunting for an old mower today………to be reborn as a shredder and dedicated to improving the soil!
Years ago I bought one of those compost turners (company name omitted) that promised beautiful compost in 14 days. When I received it, the owner’s manual advised using a shredder to accomplish the 14 day goal. Unhappily, I bought a shredder which I dutifully used. Well, I got compost but it took much longer than 14 days. I have quit using the shredder because I want to limit the use of fossil fuel in the garden. My only exception to this is the lawnmower which works very well as a shredder but doesn’t clog up.
Curious. Does it really work, garlic on a bee sting? I’ve used lavender essential oil and, while I smelled nice, I didn’t find any relief. I found that Mrs. Stewart’s bluing takes the hurt out of the initial sting, but then I end up with a pretty blue welt.
I don’t have first hand experience with the garlic technique. My stings never really hurt that much, but after I got really lit up (25 stings) I started to swell with just 5 or 6 stings.. I’ll be trying garlic next time.
I tried the garlic for the first time after getting stung last week. It never swelled up at all or itched. This was a sting on my head so it wasn’t necessarily a good test.