Garlic

I've always grown garlic.  I love garlic and eat quite a bit of it.  I also love having garlic tied in plaits hanging somewhere in my kitchen.

My results in the past have been inconsistent though and it was only in the past year that I learned why.

I usually plant a few cloves of garlic around my roses.  It helps keep some of the bugs off them.  While they've always grown, looking back, there was a large proportion that didn't grow very big or were single bulbs.  Those single bulbs were a good size for a clove of garlic, but they hadn't separated into more usable garlic as we usually know it.

I grew some in it's own bed and they tended to stay small.  That was in town and our soil was mostly sand though.  I also put it down to having used garlic from the supermarket as my seed.

Last year, I was leafing through a gardening magazine at a friend's place and there was an article about growing better garlic.  It said there was a lot of urban 'wisdom' about garlic that was just incorrect and that people wanting to grow garlic more successfully should discard it and start treating garlic with more respect.

Firstly, garlic prefers to have it's own bed and be fairly well spaced - at least 30cm (12 inches) apart.  That was a new one for me, having always been told to plant it closer than that and around my roses.  Perhaps that idea was more for the roses' benefit than for the garlic?

Secondly, that garlic likes a heavily manured and very rich soil.  I had been told garlic would grow anywhere, in any conditions, and thrived like most herbs, in poor soil.

The last thing I remember from this article was that your garlic beds needed to be kept well-weeded.  Garlic in it's own bed doesn't like competition and a weed-free bed will grow better garlic.

Looking back at all of this, it does seem rather obvious from a gardening point of view.  Most plants I grow do better without competition from weeds and good soil always makes a difference.  I don't usually do a single crop in a bed or garden because companion planting has produced better results for me, but maybe, as I said earlier, garlic being a companion for something else is not an equal exchange where the garlic is concerned.

When we lived in town, we built some large planter boxes to grow veges in.  It was rather a necessity as any good soil that was added to the sand we had would lose all nutrients rather quickly and sink into the sandy soil and become sour within a season.  A built up and lined bed, filled with good quality bio-blend soil from a garden centre was a necessity for growing any veges (other than beans - they seemed to love the crappy soil and grew like triffids).

We took the boxes with us when we moved.  We never quite knew what we were going to do with them and they were moved several times before they found their current spot.  I think we've had too many choices and between everything else that has needed doing and water issues, they just sat there.

About a year ago, I laid a thick layer of pine needles in each of them to keep weeds down and covered that with flattened cardboard boxes.   Then the planter boxes became a default compost heap or more correctly, a dumping ground for organic stuff that we didn't really know where to put. They became filled with straw, sawdust and chook poo from cleaning out the chookhouses.  They got ash from the fireplace.  They got lawn clippings and some smaller tree branches.

I used some of the badly composted results last year when I was filling up the tyres that I grew potatoes in.  Otherwise, they just sat there like an accusation of laziness and grand ideas that hadn't been followed through.

After reading a fiction book that had a stables as part of the setting, there was a scene where one of the characters had to go and dig over what they called "shite mountain".  The manure from the stable was heaped into a big pile, covered with feed sacks and once a week, someone had to turn it over, poke a few holes in it, water it thoroughly and cover it up again.  The process was explained - the watering and covering killed off any grass seeds that may be in it, as well as created a humid environment that broke it all down.

This caught my imagination as I looked out over the paddock where my cow has been staying.  I'd been constantly raking up the old hay and her manure to try and keep her paddock fairly clean.  I'd had a few ideas about what I was going to do with it all, but nothing that had stood out.  While I wasn't planning to build a Shite mountain, I thought a planter box could work.

I filled one planter box with hay and cow poo.  As I went, I soaked it and covered it with feedsacks held down by tyres.  By the time I was about halfway, Hubby noticed and joined in.  We turned it over probably once a month and celebrated the big worms that were starting to appear.  The last time we turned it over, Hubby suggested adding chook poo and sawdust to lighten it up.

By this time, we'd filled the second planter box with old hay and manure.  We've left this one open.  No sacks on top.  Partly this was a case of we hadn't gotten around to it, partly running low on feed sacks and partly to see if the difference was noticeable.

This is the box that was left uncovered.

We couldn't decide whether to dig the chookhouse sweepings through, or leave it as a mulch layer on top.  The mulch layer has worked extremely well another vege garden.  So in the spirit of experimentation, we divided the box in half lengthways.  Half was dug through and half was left on top.  Widthways, half was covered again and half was left exposed.

The mulch side is at the bottom, dug through at the top.

This morning I planted garlic in this bed.  The mulch side had fewer weeds and was easier to plant in.  The other side seemed richer and more composted.

Left end was uncovered for the last few months and right covered.  Mulch bottom and dug through top.

I guess the proof will be in the garlic harvest.