GARLIC
Supermarkets round here generally sell garlic in plastic pouches. To cut down on how many of these are thrown away, growing your own garlic is in my view the VERY easiest of veg.
All you need is a patch of ground, or like me a few pots, or a trough.
This year I have chosen a variety called Violet de Cadours for a change from my usual Germidour.
In early September I buy a pack of 2 garlic bulbs from a local nursery. (The advice is not to grow supermarket garlic as it may not be suited to our climate)
Break these up into individual cloves, discarding the smallest cloves.
I use garden soil. I don’t bother adding any fertiliser.
Push the cloves about 10cm apart from each other into the soil with the pointy bit upwards, so that the top of the pointy bit is flush with the soil.
Then fill the holes so only the very tip of the pointy bit is visible.
My small garden is surrounded by other suburban gardens, and the main pest I have are snails and pigeons, but they’ve shown little interest in my garlic. If I was worried about pests I could protect my growing garlic with netting over a frame.
After planting (and covering if you need to protect from pests) , you can forget about them over winter, no need to protect from frost or snow, a bit of sub zero temperature is supposed to do them some good.
Before long green shoots emerge from the pointy bit. Just leave them to get on with it.
At some point in the Spring the individual garlic plants may grow a stalk with what looks like a flower bud on the end. As soon as I notice these I cut the stalk off before the flower develops and opens, I don’t want my garlic putting its energy onto growing a flower. I want the energy to go into developing a good sized bulb.
I don’t throw these flower stalks away though. They have a pleasant, garlicky flavour and so I keep them in a small vase of water in the kitchen and chop them up and sprinkle them on soups, or omelettes.
Keep an eye on whether the soil needs a water from time to time as the weather warms up.
By about the end of June or early July up here in my North facing garden, the leaves of the garlic start to die back, flop over and turn brown. That signals it’s time to harvest them.
Gently dig them up keeping the roots and the leaves on. Set them out in the sun to dry, bring them in if it threatens to rain.
When the outer skin is dry and papery (about a week) I cut off the roots, shake off as much of the soil as I can, tie them up in bunches, and hang them in the kitchen, somewhere easy to hand to use.
NO plastic and NO air miles.
For a more authoritative guide to growing garlic see the RHS website.