Glorious Garlic - definitely no vampires round here

It finally stopped raining! FINALLY!  I was afraid that I was going to miss my date for planting out the garlic.  

I put garlic in nearly everything, I love it.  I reckon it goes in about 80% of my evening meals.  My favourite meals all have garlic in there somewhere!  I planted some last year and was only moderately successful, it looked like garlic and tasted like garlic but in miniature.  It was about half the size that it should have been.  I think it may have been because I planted it a bit too late, or perhaps because our spring/summer was so dry this year and they didn't get quite enough water to plump out?  


Traditionally garlic is planted on the shortest day of the year and harvested on the longest day, I planted mine right on the winter solstice last year (around June 21st) but I'm giving them a bit of a head start this year in the hope that this will give me some nice fat garlic bulbs this time.

I've planted two varieties, elephant garlic and 'normal' garlic, as the name suggests, the elephant garlic is the bigger clove in the pic :)   Elephant garlic is, weirdly, not actually garlic, apparantly it is a relative of the leek?!  It tastes like garlic but is much milder, it good for using in those dishes where you don't want to have an overpowering flavour such as salad dressings.

Normal garlic clove on the left - elephant garlic clove on the right

Despite the size difference they get treated the same way:  plant individual cloves about 10cm apart with pointy end facing up, deep enough to just cover with soil.  Planting garlic in winter is a nice reminder that summer will come around again eventually!  They'll be ready to harvest around Christmas time when the leaves are yellowing and falling over.  You can then leave in the sun for a day, braid them together and hang in a dark dry place for a year long supply of garlic (fingers crossed!).

See you in summer!

I don't think I would recommend garlic for container gardening, just because they take so long to grow and it's going to look like a pretty boring pot with skinny leaves in for about 6 months!  Instead, if you don't have a veggie patch but want to give it a try, for example if you are renting and can't dig up the the landlords plants, perhaps you can sneak a few garlic cloves in amongst the flowers.  As long as they have a bit of room to grow under the ground and some sunshine then they are pretty unobtrusive and could be dotted around the flower beds ... you'll just have to keep a mental map of where you planted them so that you don't accidentally weed them! :)

I'm not not to give you any garlic recipes, just because like I said,  I put garlic in nearly everything!  Though that said ... some of my favourites have got to be whole baby potatoes boiled and then roasted with minced garlic, salt and rosemary.  Or any meat (chicken, lamb, beef, venison) stir fried with garlic and soy sauce and then put in a wrap or pita bread with salad, grated carrots, couscous and hummus or yoghurt, AH-mazing!

So please send me your gardening mojo for a bumper crop this year :)