So many of my recent posts have been about growing food. I didn’t mean it to be that way, but it does seem to take up much of my brain these days.
This week is all about garlic. Well, that’s not strictly true. This week has mostly been about Le Tour, running, visiting jumping nephews, and four day weekends.
But there has also been more garlic around of late.
This was my garlic patch last week. A sorry sight, all dried and flopped over. I blamed myself – I planted it under a tree, where it gets little sunshine and probably even less water. In my defence I planted it in the winter, and the tree didn’t seem quite so overwhelming then, but I should have known.
A few weeks ago wind whistled through the garden and my upstanding garlic all fell down. And down it stayed. I even condescended to water it a little, but nothing would revive it.
I dug down a bit and found that it did look a little like garlic, and today I figured it wasn’t going to grow any more so I might as well use the space to kill off some other type of plants instead.
And so I harvested the garlic. All 35 bulbs of it. Some teeny tiny little bulbs, and some that look rather more like what you’d buy in the shop, but all recognisably garlicky, in looks and in smell.
Looking back I see I planted 40 cloves, so that’s not a bad success rate for me!
Apparently it needs to be left to dry for a few days, preferably outside. My stalks are brittle and I don’t think they’ll stand up to being plaited in a pleasing fashion to hang in the kitchen, so these will have their roots and stalks chopped off and be stored in mesh bags.
Despite their unpromising looks, I’m pretty excited. This is the first thing I’ve had an actual crop of. I don’t think this is going to last us an entire year, but I’d say certainly a few months.
And most excitingly, the equivalent shop cost of all that garlic was £10.50. It’s starting to look like I might just break even in the garden after all…
a cheerful living adventure 