Garlic has arrived.
So, October is the time for the planting of the garlic bulbs. You want to give them about 4-6 weeks in the ground before the first good frost and in Western PA, that's about..... NOW. So, thinking I was slick, a few months ago, I ordered A WHOLE POUND of Organic Heirloom Garlic Bulbs from High Mowing Organics and planned to do my exponential grow thing to that WHOLE POUND of garlic, (which it turns out is only like 4 bulbs, each of which contain 7-10 cloves, and it's those cloves that you individually plant and they become the new bulbs which you then harvest, separate, and re-plant etc..) where I plant all whopping 28-40 cloves this year, harvest approx. 25 bulbs (or 175 cloves) next year and re-plant those and some time around the year 2020 I have enough tasty heirloom garlic to sell to our loyal customers.
Sat down, did some brainstorming as to how I could reduce the time until I had marketable garlic, and the two winning ideas were #1. try and order more garlic online line and get it planted as soon as it gets here and hope there's enough time and/or #2. hijack one of them garlic freighters carrying garlic from China to here and sell it here. Both ideas had their own specific problems, #1 for instance, turns out there is/was a massive run on heirloom garlic bulbs this year and all of my normal suppliers were wiped and #2's problem was my ship boarding skills are a little rusty and my helicopter is in the shop.
Decided to go with idea #1 and adapted and overcame its problem set by using this new technological innovation called "The Google" to find new untouched garlic suppliers. Now, assuming the site I ordered from was not a hastily designed shell site for a "let us exploit the small farmers who failed to initially order enough garlic by stealing their online sale info whilst making them think they are slick ordering garlic in October" scam I should be golden.