I like cooking things like Chinese food with lots of garlic, so I have finally managed to make room for the bulbs I ordered a couple of months ago from The Garlic Farm on the Isle of Wight. I didn’t know where to start so I ordered a special set of everything; we’ll see what comes up. Thankfully the instructions say that it can be planted any time from autumn to spring, as it needs a period of cold weather to get it going. Moog thinks that’s why supermarket garlic sprouts when you keep it in the fridge too long… I’ve also dug in lots of manure as Moog thinks the garlic will like that.
Moog thought we should use the blog to record what we plant; otherwise we’ll forget what we put there by the time it (hopefully) grows. There’s a good chance we’ll also lose the instructions that came with the bulbs, and forget when to harvest the stuff too. So, this is what we planted at the beginning of December 2007:
Early Purple Wight. A purple hard-necked garlic from China. Ready to harvest around May/June. Harvest as soon as it’s ready, should keep for 2-3 months.
Chesnock Wight. Hard-necked garlic from around the Black Sea. A flowering head is supposed to appear in June, which should be cut off above leaf level to increase bulb size (seems a shame). Harvested in June after Early Wight, should keep until Christmas.
Iberian Wight. Soft-neck large white early garlic originating from the Mediterranean, grows nearly on the surface, ready in June.
Garlic likes it if you spread sulphate of potash around the plants in Feb/March; they need to be kept weed free and watered like anything else, but stop watering 3 weeks before harvesting. Assuming any of this grows at all, I may have to leave harvesting a week or two later than it says, as I’m later planting than I wanted, and, as Moog rightly points out, we don’t live on the Isle of Wight.
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