It’s time to plant garlic. Breaking apart the garlic bulbs to separate the cloves, leaves behind a mountain of paper-like garlic skins. They are beautiful on their own. These are destined for the compost pile, but if you do some searching, you’ll find people doing a variety of things with garlic skins.

By mid summer, these garlic cloves will have turned into fat, juicy garlic bulbs. As I stick these cloves into the moist soil, I see the wonderful scapes and bulbs these cloves will be next summer.

On the way back from planting the garlic, I bring in some gleanings from the field. Looking at the healthy roots on these turnips and radishes, it’s easy to see how much we owe dirt for all our food.