The 2-3 week advice from the locals sounds like it means for most garden crops but it shouldn't apply to garlic since it should already be in the ground months ago. So if you can't dig up even a small corner of the garden yet for the garlic then you can grow garlic in a container just not one of those small peat biodegradable pots. Buy a big plastic pot, something 12-14" wide and a bag of potting mix (not soil) and plant 6-7 cloves in a circle in it. With a bigger pot you can plant more cloves. Can't help with the spinach question other than to say if you plant it you can still eat all the young small leaves that come up but it sounds like it won't last long before it bolts. Dave

I generally plant garlic in the fall around the outside of my 4'x8' raised beds. They are always the first green things in early spring. This year I had to move a couple of the garlic plants in order to fit some tomato plants in there. I transplanted them in early May. It's warmed up so fast this summer that I just harvested all the garlic this morning. Even though I was careful with the root system when I transplanted, the transplanted garlic were noticeably smaller. So don't discount the effect of transplanting on production. I'm in zone 6, so you may not have the same problems, but I wasn't as consistent at getting water to the plants early on as I could have been. Also, the shoots can be set back by frosts, so likely it was a combination of things that happened to slow the growth. But if your harvest date isn't for a couple of months, leave them be. At the very least you'll have fresh garlic greens and those are delicious on their own ;)

Yes. Just add some compost after planting.

Tom - The OP appears to be in either Maine or New Hampshire. Pretty cold and snowy I imagine. I have a raised lettuce table outside that I could probably drill and plant in. It is about 16-18" deep. My concern it might freeze and thaw several times between now and next growing season. Thoughts? Covering the top of the soil with mulch might not do much on a raised lettuce table since the bottom of the soil will still be exposed to the elements. How much garlic are we talking about here? Do you have snow cover on your in ground beds yet? If you are not planting very much then I'd lean towards the drill planting as Zeedman suggests and then mulch heavily. If you have quite a lot to plant I'd probably put the bulbs in a paper bag and then into the crisper drawer of the fridge and plant as soon as possible in the spring. The fridge temps will vernalize the garlic and make it think it's been through a winter outside.