(this post off the growing together newhaven blog)
Inspired by planting bulbs on the first day of the winter wonderland course
I thought I’d try a few at home, of course your supposed to raise bulbs from those supplied by seed centres as they’d be free from diseases
but i had a few organic ones left over from the supermarket which were beginning to sprout, so ever the optimist thought I’d just plant them and see what happens
Theres no proper beds in my small back garden, so i thought i’d try them in containers
I went for using old strawberry punnets from the summer, it rather irks me that they nearly always end up as landfill
the main drawback with this being that there might be insufficent soil for them to grow to their full size, but best just to try and see
this size container worked ok for my lettuce seeds over the summer
ok rather a dull picture, but i’ll update it if anything happens to sprout!
planting garlic bulbs
garlic is grown from bulbs, break the bulbs up into individual cloves
plant the right way up! the leaves sprout from the top
Plant in mid to late autumn
Planting distance: 7.5 – 10 cm (3-4 in)
Planting depth: 5 cm (2in)
Distance between rows: 30 cm (12 in)
Harvesting: Mid – late summer
Garlic (Allium sativum) has been used for thousands of years for medicinal purposes. Sanskrit records show its medicinal use about 5,000 years ago, and it has been used for at least 3,000 years in Chinese medicine. The Egyptians, Babylonians, Greeks, and Romans used garlic for healing purposes. In 1858, Pasteur noted garlic’s antibacterial activity.
Currently, garlic is used for reducing cholesterol levels and cardiovascular risk, as well as for its antineoplastic and antimicrobial properties. good for cleaning the blood!
Garlic was placed by the ancient Greeks on the piles of stones at cross-roads, as a supper for Hecate — a goddess of the wilderness and childbirth, or for protection from demons. The garlic was supposed to confuse the evil spirits and cause them to lose their way.
and vampires!
Plus the rather obvious point that its delicious and is hard to imagine cooking a meal without lobbing in at least a few cloves