Tuesday, February 14, 2017

Container gardening: garlic


A sunny day today in our corner of the UK and it's finally above freezing.  Not much happening in the garden these days, but my garlic adds a nice bit of greenery to my rooftop garden.

We grow garlic down at the allotment and I love it so much that I grow it in containers on my rooftop garden, especially as I have no other use for my containers during the winter months.

 It's hardy and tolerates overwintering along with my coffee grinds that get thrown on it on a daily basis as they are the closest pots to my rooftop door.








It's quite simple to grow, just pop it into the ground in late autumn with the cloves pointing up and wait for spring.


I must admit, I am a *rebel* when it comes to garlic.  I plant whatever starts to sprout from my supermarket stash.  Down at the allotment Dicky orders proper garlic from garden supply stores, but truth be told, the supermarket version works just fine for me. 

My current generation of garlic was a 'leftover' from a previous season.  I missed to harvest a few cloves and they started to sprout again so I separated them out and planted them.
Previously I used large soda/water bottles.  They work quite well as they are deep: 

  

Here is fresh garlic from last year.  If you plant in the new year you usually get one large bulb of garlic.  Planting in autumn will give you a traditional head of garlic with multiple cloves.

Depending on where you live you may be able to get a little garlic in now to harvest in late summer.  

A word to the wise--fresh garlic is stronger than the dried version that you buy in the supermarkets, so use less until you gauge its strength.

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