Garlic is one of those crops that gets a bit of a bad wrap in the gardening world. It's always talked about in terms of how loooooong it takes to grow, and to be honest, I can see why that alone would be enough to put some people off. But it's an ingredient we use lavishly in our house, so no matter how long we had to wait for it it was a 'must try' in our garden.
In May we purchased two bulbs from the nursery and planted the twenty cloves within. We waited, waited and waited some more. On the 31st of October we dug our first garlic plant - we suspected it was a little too early but we just had to know what was going on beneath the soil! And, at that time, it was nothing more than a giant unsegmented clove of garlic.
So we waited, waited and waited some more, and last week we harvested all remaining 19 bulbs which weighed in at a total of more than 2kgs! In organic terms that is well over $50 worth of garlic, which is a nice saving, but most importantly it hasn't been imported, bleached, sprayed with anti sprouting chemicals and it hasn't been treated with Methyl Bromide (a toxic broad spectrum pesticide) which, sadly, all imported garlic is doused in prior to reaching the shelves.
With such a great result from our first garlic attempt, we are already planning 2015's crop. Next year we plan to grow much more and learn the art of curing and storing so that in the future there will be very few months of the year where we are without our very own, organically grown, untreated garlic. And for us, that's a super exciting thought!
