Planting Garlic

Just over a week ago I planted garlic, just a couple of rows to test how this particular crop fairs on my allotment. My soil is heavy clay which can get very sticky in wet weather, to help prevent my garlic from rotting I created little planting holes with a trowel and half filled them with fresh compost before adding the cloves, then filled them in with more compost.

I grow my favourite garlic in my garden at home successfully, ‘Red Duke’ is a very hardy variety and seems to store well for a hardneck. After harvesting in summer I select the biggest bulbs and put them aside for growing on in autumn, this works well for me and prevents the need for buying seed garlic every year which is so expensive. To think I started off with just 2 seed bulbs and now harvest well over 100 bulbs!

Hardneck varieties of garlic produce scapes in summer which are a real treat, I’d like to make pesto with them next year and have filed away some recipes to try out.