The time is now for planting garlic, in the upper midwest.  You probably have just a couple more weeks, depending on the weather.  I got mine in today during the kids’ nap.  First I dug a trench about 3-4 in. deep:

Then I pulled apart the 4 bulbs of seed garlic that I had bought at the farmers’ market a few weeks ago, and placed each clove pointy side up in the trench:

If those cloves look ginormous, it’s because they ARE.  A couple of the bulbs only had 2-3 cloves in them.  I’m not sure what variety of garlic these are; I should have paid better attention when I was buying them.  My only hope is that I didn’t crowd them too close.  Anyway after placing the bulbs, I covered them with about 1/2 in. of compost:

Then I put the rest of the dirt back on top of the compost, watered with some fresh ICE COLD rain barrel water, and that’s it.  I also popped a couple of cloves into an open spot in my flower bed; I’m curious to see how they’ll do there.

Update, 14 April 2010: Success! (Including the flower bed ones!)