It is time to plant some garlic. How do I know that? Because my wonderful Italian neighbour told me so. And she left a container of her very own garlic at my doorstep as a reminder! Last year I planted my garlic too late in the season and you may remember that it didn't grow very well. Although it was delicious and I'm still using the last few bulbs, each bulb was only one clove, not a group of cloves like normal. When we moved into the street less than a year ago, my neighbour promised me she'd tell me when she planted her garlic, so I could follow. I hadn't expected her to give me some of her garlic collection so I'd already been to the markets and picked up a few bulbs of locally-grown varieties. I ended up with this:
I gave some of the cloves to my colleague to plant in her garden. As I've said before, garlic is the perfect 'vegetable' for the lazy gardener to grow. You buy a bulb or two from your grocery store (make sure it's Australian because the imported ones are bleached and sprayed with horrid chemicals). Break it into cloves, plant each one about 15cm apart, pointy side up about 1cm below the soil surface. Then you wait... you don't have to do look after them, they generally look after themselves. Then later in the year, when the weather starts to warm up again, you can harvest.
I recently advised a friend to plant some among his roses. The plants don't look unattractive and might even keep some bugs off his plants.
I lost count of how many I planted this year... it could be close to 100. So my friends might be getting some garlicky Christmas gifts again this year if all goes to plan!
So go and get yourself some garlic and plant it now and when you taste your home-grown garlic next summer, you'll be glad you did!
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