After my poop mission the other day, I got some garlic bulbs for planting from Bunnings. Some people swear by planting garlic on the shortest day, June 21, others I think just like the routine of planting on the same date every year. But garlic can be planted in July too, and even August in some places. Garlic bulbs for planting should be sourced from a garden centre, NOT the supermarket or fruit and vege shop. Garlic grown commercially is often treated with growth-inhibitors to stop it from sprouting after harvest and there’s no telling where it’s come from and what else it’s been through.
I decided to plant my garlic at one end of the ‘mustard’ bed that I dug my green manure into a few weeks ago. Since I had horse pooh there I chucked some of that in the soil too. Garlic likes lots of organic matter and my garlic will not go hungry. I am determined to grow some nice fat garlic that I can save bulbs from for growing next year. Then I used my amazing freestyle line-drawing skills and dug holes along the lines. I planted a few cloves, one per hole, and then thought, “Hey, I have a better idea.” Translation: “Hey, I can be more of a control freak about this.”
I pulled all the cloves off each garlic bulb and sorted them into four piles: large, medium, small and too small to plant-use in kitchen. I resumed my planting, planting the cloves from large to small, moving right to left and front to back. This is almost an automatic response to me. I know what you’re thinking, “OCD”, but as I always tell people, OCD is a disorder, not a personality trait. Organised, particular, control freak; these are adjectives that I will readily accept. In any case, I am curious to see how the size of the harvested bulbs correlates to the size of the original cloves. The biggest cloves should produce the biggest bulbs. I planted 30 cloves in all. In my excitement, I forgot to take a photo of my nicely-laid-out garlic holes.
My next vege garden task was more weeding (when will it end?) and pooh spreading; the latter being the more fun job. The seeds I hastily sowed in autumn mostly didn’t come to much, as the weeds utterly choked them. Oops, eager beaver. That was before I realised the extent of the weed forces around here. Also, the weather turned from sunny and mild to bad a couple of days after I sowed them. So now I am just hoeing out the weeds, a bit at a time, and getting rid of them so they don’t keep growing. Then I will dig the horse pooh into the soil. Today I hand-weeded around the parsley and spring onions, then gave them a dressing of manure to give them some much-needed nutrients. I spotted a few worms in the horse pooh, which is great – hopefully they will get to work mixing the pooh into the soil. The dark brown stuff looks marvellous and for once this part of the vege garden looks void of weeds. It is the best-looking part of the vege garden at the moment! We’ll see how long that lasts…
Wild Hope Homestead 