Geof -- was there snow cover? Last winter was so brutal (as you know as well as I do), I really wondered how my garlic would do (not in a raised bed, in ground -- but the frost went SO far down I didn't think things would ever thaw out) -- it did have a lot of snow over it, thankfully, and every single clove that I planted (about 150 of them) came up. Which is better than I normally can expect! I'm kind of wondering if your problem wasn't more from the unusually wet fall (I'm assuming you had a lot of rain last fall like we did ??) and then again in the spring
One thing is for sure -- when it comes to growing stuff, there's always something that happens to throw a monkey wrench into your plans.
