Planting Garlic

We have planted our first crop - garlic. We got a selection of garlic from The Garlic Farm. We got 6 kinds - Solent Wight, Early Purple Wight and Iberian Wight, which are all softneck types, and Purple Heritage Moldovan, Lautrec Wight and Chesnok Wight, which are all hardneck types. We got one head of each.

Our plot hasn't been worked in a long time, and the soil is gone very hard, so there is loads of digging to do before planting anything. We dug to a depth of around 2 spade heads, and by that stage we were in concrete-thick clay. We forked it and turned it over though and removed as many of the millions of weeds roots as we could so hopefully the little garlics will be ok. We also made a slightly raised bed to help with drainage. I'll get a picture soon.

Here's another action shot of Guy giving it welly with the digging. This is the upper layer of soil which is quite nice but full of weeds, especially a very thick stubborn grass.


To plant garlic, you simply separate a head of garlic into cloves, being really careful not to split the skins, and then pop each one into the ground, roots down, just underneath the surface. They need around 6 inches between cloves, and 12 to 18 inches between rows. We planted 6 cloves of each type. Only the bigger outer cloves are worth planting, so we took the rest home to eat. We also managed to split the skin of loads of them, its pretty hard to avoid.

We weren't aware of what hardneck and softneck garlic was before, but it was pretty apparent when we started taking them apart. The hardneck types have a thick stalk in the middle of the head, which make them pretty easy to take apart - just move the stalk from side to side and the cloves separate easy enough. This means that the stuff we buy in supermarkets must be softneck - no middle stalk.

We planted them in late October. I've read that the best date to plant them is winter solstice mid December, but we were too excited with the new plot to wait! Harvest is expected from May to July for the different types. They were already peeking their heads up when I was last at the plot, I'll get a picture the next time.

Die weeds die!

This is a huge strimmers that we borrowed from the allotment shop. It comes with a full body harness and is run on testosterone and insanity. As you can see, the plot is pretty darn overgrown. The weeds were up to knee height before we started.

We took it in turns to strim parts of the plot as it is really big. The toughest part was the very back of the plot which was wild with blackberry vines. This is Guy leaping into commando strimming action hacking them all down. He said it was the closest he ever got to being in the army. You can also see our little greenhouse here, it's really cute and made of old doors.


And here's Hugh putting the final touches to the cleared plot. When the strimmers was running it sprayed grass and weeds and spiders and all sorts of muck everywhere, and it was really loud, so it was impossible to see or hear anything while strimming. I think it was shortly after this picture that Hugh mamaged to strim a poor frog. It was pretty grim. Since then I've been trying to make a load of noise to scare away other frogs so they don't suffer trajic allotment accidents. This makes me look a little mental to the neighbours, as I jump around shooing the ground. Ah well.

New Allotment!!

Myself, Hugh and Guy have got an allotment! Well actually we've had one for a few months now, just I haven't gotten around to putting any pictures up yet. It's in North Finchley, around a mile away from our new flat (around 2 miles from Guy and Sarah's) and its lovely.

Above is a satellite view of the plots courtesy of Google Maps. The red x marks where I think our one is - note the total overgrown nature. This picture is a bit old though and I can't recognize any of the neighbouring allotments in it, as they are all now empty waiting for the spring, so I'm not certain if the marked plot is ours.

Ours is a new area of the North Finchley allotments, so a lot of our neighbouring plots are owned by beginners too, and they are friendly and helpful with advice. One of the lads gave us a bunch of broad beans to plant and we gave him daffodils. I'm pretty sure he was taken aback as you can't eat them, but he seemed happy enough.

So anyway we got the plot in September and we have quite a bit done already. I'll get more pictures tomorrow and will try to keep you posted on the growth!