My mystery garlic crop

Garlic is one of my favourite winter vegetable to grow.  There isn’t much that can go wrong with garlic, but I you get the best results if you prepare the soil well and keep the weeds down throughout the growing period.  Home grown garlic smells and tastes great, and will keep for up to 12 months if stored under the correct conditions.  I keep mine in a mesh bag in the bottom of the pantry with my potatoes and onions.  They have survived will in the cool, dark, airy conditions since I harvested them in November last year

Last year I managed to produced around 5kg of garlic of various varieties, mostly sourced through Diggers.  When I planted them, I made a conscious effort to label each variety so I could see which varieties performed best in our growing conditions.  But off course the labels washed off and I was left with about 5 different varieties with no names.  So I told myself that this year things will be different, I’m going to do my darndest to record the varieties and track their growth through the season……  So off to the markets I go and find a stall selling different varieties all bundled up in a neat little box.  She told me specifically what the varieties were and I was on my merry way.

By the time I had got home I knew the varieties were: Melbourne Market, Bordertown something, Italian something else, and another one …. ( I so need to write things down!).

So on the weekend I started my garlic planting program with the various nameless varieties, and a few more I had purchased online through an SA grower on Farmhouse Direct (Just like an online farmers market where you can by direct from the seller).

I planted the garlic into a bed which had previously grown tomatoes the previous summer (2014/15).  The spot had been fairly neglected over the most recent summer, so it needed a good dig over and an addition of compost and blood and bone.  Garlic like soils which are not too acidic and also need good drainage, so the compost will help achieve this.

Garlic, being a root vegetable will also benefit from an application of phosphorus.  Phosphorus is an essential element for the early growth and development of the plant.  So I added a good handful of super-phosphate to get the phosphorus levels up.  I know its not an organic option, but I didn’t have any rock dust handy.

After working the soil and adding fertiliser, it was time to look at the random collection of garlic I had.  I have a mix of hard and soft necked garlics.

Garlic varieties can be split into 2 main types, hard and soft necked.  Whats the difference?  A hard necked garlic is more suited to cold climates.  Hard necks tend to produce fewer cloves, which are larger in size, the cloves are also stronger in flavour.  Whereas the soft necked garlic has a longer shelf life.  I personally prefer the hard necked varieties for their clove size and the ease of use in the kitchen.

When planting garlic, its really important that you separate the bulb out to the individual cloves.  Choose only the plumpest and healthiest for planting.  In my collection, I had a few cloves which seemed a little stained, so rather than risk infecting my whole crop with a disease, I discarded these bulbs.  The smaller cloves around the centre of the bulb were also put aside.  These can be planted in another spot and harvested for their shoots.  The garlic shoots will make a tasty addition to a stir fry later.

With the soil well fertilised and composted, I was able to easily poke the garlic into the soil, with each clove (pointy end up) spaced around 10cm apart and planted about 1 knuckle deep (that is around 1.5cm below the soil surface).  Once the cloves were covered over with soil, I added a thick layer of loose peastraw mulch to deter the weeds, and gave them a good water.  Garlic don’t respond well to competition, so its important that they are kept weed free for the best results.

While it is still dry, the garlic will need to be watered a couple of times a week to get them off to a good start.  During their early growing period, they will also respond to an application of a liquid soil booster such as Charlie Carp of GoGo Juice, this will help to keep the soil active and releasing the nutrients to keep the garlic growing throughout the season.

Now to sit and wait!  Garlic will put on a lot of leafy growth until Spring time.  Its only in the last month of growth that the bulb begins to form.  This will usually be around October / November.  You can check on the bulbs progress by poking around at the base of the plant and feeling for the bulb with your finger.  In November the leaves of the garlic will start to die back, at this point stop watering and wait for the plant to die back by around 3/4.  Once this has happened and you are certain that the bulbs have formed, they can be carefully lifted from the soil with a garden fork, taking care not to damage the bulbs as you go.

Garlic can be planted from around mid March through to mid May, after this the soil becomes too cold and the garlic will grow too slowly.  Over the next few weeks, I will be planting more garlic and then hopefully the rain will come and take over the watering, and I can consult my books and try and find out what varieties I have.

Happy garlic growing!!