Growing Garlic in Winter

Several months ago we visited the Plymouth Farmer's Market and purchased some garlic scapes from Michigan Garlic Farm. My wife loves garlic and we cook with it a lot (although she did not particularly like the scapes). After talking with Les and Donna for 15 - 20 minutes at the farmer's market, my excitement for growing garlic was ignited. The Abel Family talks about garlic with so much energy and vitality that it's contagious. We purchased a few varieties from them for planting, although I forgot to ask specifics, and I also purchased another 1 lb from another source a little later on.

With some of the Earthboxes moved out of the normal "flower" beds that the previous homeowner installed, we now have room to plant some garlic! I planted most of our beds with the Music garlic variety and the remainder with the garlic we purchased from Michigan Garlic Farm.

Here are a few pictures (please excuse the picture quality from my cell phone):

It's my first attempt at garlic, so I am not really expecting spectacular results. If we have a few small successes, I'll be happy. The soil is supposed to be worked 18", but for my backyard I couldn't achieve that without some type of mechanical tiller (I don't own one), so I had to settle for a 7-8" base of worked soil, and another 4 inches of mulch on top. I planted the garlic about 5" inches deep.

We also have a second bed on the opposite side of the deck that was planted and mulched also.

For any of the garlic pro's that might read this post later, I apologize if I have violated any written or unwritten laws of growing garlic successfully. Sometimes when conditions are less than perfect, I employ the Nike strategy and go into Larry Cable Guy's mode of just getting it done. Most of the time, I achieve some level of success in spite of myself. I've got my fingers crossed! :-)

Is anyone else growing garlic this fall?