I usually plant my garlic in the middle of october. We've been having some nice warm weather lately so I put off planting for a week or so. You want to plant your garlic so it has time to acclimate but not so much time that it starts to grow too much. If it starts to put out leaves, it will have to stop when the weather gets too cold and the ground freezes. That takes energy from the garlic clove that it doesn't need to be expending now, as it will have to do that in spring.

Garlic is a heavy feeder, so I enrich the soil with composted manure or compost before i plant. Separate the garlic head into individual cloves. Plant the cloves (pointy end up) 4" deep, 4-6" apart and 6-8" between the rows. You should cover your garlic with mulch for the winter. 6-10" of mulch for hard neck garlic, and 10-12" for soft neck garlic. Don't put the mulch on till after the first frost, if you put it on too early, it will give overwintering insects a nice warm home for the winter, and give them a jump on your crops next season.

Most garlic types are winter hardy, though some varieties of soft necks only do well in warm climates. The reason you add the mulch is to prevent the bulbs from heaving out of the ground. When the temps start to drop, but warm up during the day, or in spring when it's getting warm but then gets cold again, the bulbs can heave themselves out of the ground. The mulch keeps the soil temp from fluctuating too much and keeps the garlic in the ground.

Lots of garden crops are still doing fine, as we haven't had a frost yet. The heat lovers though aren't very happy. It's not warm enough for them, and the sun is getting weaker than they like as well. My cayenne pepper plants have a lot of large green peppers on them. A good way to ripen some of them up is to pull the entire plant, dust off the root ball, then bring inside and hang upside down in an airy place. A good number of the peppers will ripen up for you that way.