My Garlic Harvest

My garlic was ready to harvest so today seemed as good a time as any.

Somewhere in amongst all those weeds is garlic ready to be harvested. Pretty easy really. Just stick a digging fork under the bulb to loosen it a bit then lift it out of the soil and knock off the excess soil.


(If you click on the photos it will take you to the bigger picture. But please come back!)





I was more than surprised at the size and quality of my crop. This is the haul from a 9m/sq area and I probably could have planted the rows closer and increased the size of my crop further. And the smell while knocking off the soil was delicious.

When the leafy part of the garlic has dried I going to have a go at a Garlic braid. If I can manage a half decent job I'll post some photos.








There was some massive bulbs in amongst the crop and these ones here I have put aside for planting next year. I put the dutch hoe in the photo to give you some idea of the size of the bulbs.











Beans, Borlotti and Ying Yang.

Straight after I harvested the garlic I did the lazy gardener thing. As I had stuck the digging fork into most of the bed to lift the garlic I just raked the bed out shaped up a few rows and planted, firstly, a row of ying yang beans around the out side (because they are a semi-climber) of the bed.
I then planted six rows of borlotti beans in the rest of the bed.

To make up for the lack of soil preparation I'll hill the beans when they are about six inches high with a blood and bone enriched compost then follow that up with some chook pen straw for mulch. Then when they just start about to flower I'll run around with some sulphate of potash to help with flowering and pod set.

Well that's it for today

Cheers and happy gardening

Stewart