Growing Garlic. Adding blood and bone. Part 3

🍅 Subscribe here https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9wf... #growinggarlic #plantinggarlic #organicgardening 🍄I don't believe it. In the last video, I was out of focus and in this video, I lost sound. Hopefully, the last one goes off without a hitch. This week, the final step before planting, I'm adding blood and bone and racking it in. You will also find My Veggie Garden at, 🍄Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/myvegiegarden 🍄Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/my_veggie_g... 🍄Blog - https://stewarts-vg.blogspot.com/

Growing Garlic Part Two. Adding the Rooster Booster, pelletized chicken manure, to the garlic bed.

This week I'm adding the Rooster Booster, pelletized chicken manure to the garlic bed.

Getting the garden bed prepared ready for planting garlic.

🍄Garlic by Penny Woodward. https://www.booktopia.com.au/garlic-penny-woodward/prod9781864471199.html?source=pla&gclid=CjwKCAjw7MzkBRAGEiwAkOXexCn13_QS0u5e482EzrMDJv31BAy88B6cMXp99qxjhi4AXQEhKnJuehoC3_QQAvD_BwE

🍅  Subscribe here - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC9wfr8kaj_QauCNS5TeHEqw?sub_confirmation=1

#growinggarlic #plantinggarlic #organicgardening



You can also find My Veggie Garden at,
🍄Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/myvegiegarden
🍄Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/my_veggie_garden_qld/
🍄Blog - https://stewarts-vg.blogspot.com/

It's garlic planting time.

It's time to dust off the digging fork and start getting ready for the best time of the year.

That's garlic planting time.

Get that garlic planted.

Garlic bed prep.

I've started getting the soil ready for planting garlic around the end of March or early April.

I have two varieties to plant. One is Italian Red coming from The Diggers Club and the other is a white garlic that I picked up from an organic shop and have been growing here for the last two or three years.

Both soft neck varieties suited to our warmer climate.

When I'm Feeling Blue

I'm feeling a little blue today. After weeks of fabulous late Autumn weather things have turned cold for us here.
And after a miserable overcast day yesterday that only managed to deliver us a grand total of four mils of rain I've decided to cheer myself up with a heap of photos that I took of the garden last Tuesday.
These were taken at around 11:00 am and the weak, late Autumn sunlight, was simply marvelous for taking photos.

 Spinach is just getting going. Made a nice spinach spaghetti with them the other day.

Two tubs of lettuce is keeping me going.

A Lisbon Lemon tree I planted on Tuesday. I've got a video to edit on planting it and then you'll be hearing a lot more about this

Might be my last strawberry now until the weather warms up again. They are still flowering but I suspect the cold will take care or that for a while. 

Same for my chilli

And tomatoes. This is a late planting of tomatoes in the warmest part of my garden in an effort to see if I can get tomatoes to fruit here during winter in Toowoomba.

More lettuce. Never too much lettuce. What I don't eat the chooks (chickens) will take care of.

Silverbeet going gangbusters 

 as is the garlic.

Peas are powering and I've sown some old purple podded pea seed I found while tidying up and they are sprouting up out of the ground too.

I came out of hospital in early July last year and was greeted with mandies from my tree so I'm looking forward to a big mandy feast very soon.

Broad beans are growing strongly.

 Biggest and best parsley I've ever grown.

This might finally be the end of my Basil too.

Rhubarb's getting ready for winter.

And sage.

I feel better now or at least not so blue.

Cheers

Stewart.

Wow, what a day.

Wow, what a day. It's my daughter's 21st and it's been two months since my last operation and after today's effort in the garden I'm feeling ecstatic.

It's been years now since I've been able to do a full day's work and still feel OK at the end of the day.

The morning was made up of weeding, watering and liquid fertilising everything and I mean everything. Roses, perennials, annuals, veggies. You name it it got liquid ferilised. 

I've planted a lot of flowering annuals this year to keep me happy. Annuals like petunias, poppies, snappies, pansies, violas, and primulas in the shady parts of the garden as well. All of these were liquid fertilized as well as all the veggies like the peas, silverbeet, garlic, lettuce, cabbages, strawberries, chillies (still flowering and being warm here for this time of the year I might get another small crop) and broccoli.

The afternoon was all the boring stuff like putting all the prunings through the mulcher, working over the compost heap, mowing the lawn and clearing an overgrown site for planting the Lisbon lemon I bought.

My daughter, the one turning 21, works in a coffee shop/cafe so guess what this is.

Getting rad with my ish. There's 500 little radish seeds per packet so I won't be running out any time soon.

A handy sized seed, no pun intended, I'm just poking a few into small spaces or in between  rows of other veggies, they'll be long gone and out of the way by the time the other veggies grow up

My lemonade tree lemonading.

Seriously just juice and drink, delicious

Next cab off the rank. This is the Lisbon I bought and will be planting in the area I started preparing this after noon.

Two little rhubarb leaves.

When I was harvesting some leaves last week a chunk of main stem came off as well so I bunged it into a pot full of potting mix and now it's looking like I've two more Rhubarbs to plant come spring.

Frustrated.

Hi, frustrated here or all work and no play is making Stewart a dull boy.
6 days a week, 11hrs a day for a below minimum wage without any benefits or super isn't helping matters much either. On top of that I'm only getting, at best, a half a day a week in the veggie garden.

But I'm not sitting here wallowing in self pity, I'm putting a plan of action together to see if I can dig myself out of the hole I'm in. Resumes are flying left right and center and with some luck I hope to get a job as a disability support worker with better pay and conditions and more respectable working hours leaving more time for myself. Driving a cab is enjoyable and rewarding work but the low pay and long hours are wearing pretty thin.

As for the veggie garden there is some progress with Broad Beans, Peas, Lettuce, Garlic and up until last nights possum attack I had some cabbages. Spinach has suffered under the hands and chewing of the possum as well.

The strawberries have had some TLC in the form of compost and some cheap composted cow manure I purchased from Masters.

3 from 4 of the bunching shallots have sprouted and the 4th is just sitting there and might get around to it anytime it likes.

I've also planted a punnet of Tomatoes in the warmest part of the garden as an experiment to see if I can get any tomatoes during winter. I'm thinking with the cold nights and short day length that it will be unlikely but you've got to be in it to win it.

Anyhow that's about it for now, I have to go out and put some cut up apple in the possum trap to see if I can save what's left of the veggie garden.

Cheers and don't let the possums bite.

Stewart.

P.S. I nearly forgot to mention the best bit. The veggie garden received 26ml of rain last Thursday and Friday. Doing the happy rain dance.

I planted some garlic.

I planted some garlic. Here's how I did it. And remember, pointy end up.

Storms with some rain

Storms with some rain in them have been predicted for this weekend so I'm taking as much of my health as I can summon and I'm a planting seeds.

So I got a row of Spinach in and hoed over a few sq mts for peas and ran out of puff.

Tomorrow I'll plant the pea seeds and start getting a bed ready for some broad been seeds.

It was nice to smell the smell of freshly turned moist soil.

I was also walking through Coles when I spotted some Shallots and picked up four of them and I'll bung em in the garden tomorrow as well.

(The shallot is a botanical variety of the species Allium cepa, to which the multiplier onion also belongs. The shallot was formerly classified as a separate species, A. ascalonicum, a name now considered a synonym of the currently accepted name. Wikipedia)

I've also got some Garlic saved from last years harvest to plant as well. Seeing as I'm going back to work on Monday it's looking like I've got a few busy days ahead.

Cheers

Stewart.

Plant garlic

All the good folk from www.warmearth.com.au have recommended that it’s not (see below for good advice from the Warm Earth crowd) too late to plant your garlic so if you don’t have yours in yet then maybe it’s time to get crackng.

Plant garlic

There's an old garden tradition that garlic is planted on the shortest day of the year and harvested on the longest, but in actual fact it can go in any time between May and the end of July. Buy seed garlic from your local garden centre or purchase organic, locally-grown garlic bulbs from a farmers' market or greengrocers. Pull the bulbs apart and only plant the fattest outer cloves, as these produce the fattest bulbs. Don't peel off the papery skins. Just poke them in the soil, pointy end facing up, about 5cm deep. Mark the rows so you don't accidentally dig the cloves up again before they've sprouted. Give garlic its own bed and make sure it's weed-free. Mulch after planting and ignore until spring, when you need to regularly water to ensure the bulbs fatten up fast.

All the best and cheers

Stewart

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

Wednesday walkthrough.

Hi all,
I just put new batteries in the camera, went for a walk around the garden and here are the results.

First off is the purple flowering broad beans which are doing quite well if I do say so myself.


Click on the photos if you want to see a bigger photo.



Next is the freshly sown onion bed. Not much to see, Just a nice photo of of some fresh soil, but can't you just see the potential?













I love a good yellow rose as much as the next person so here's one to share.














A small selection of dwarf and mini brasscias.
There's red cabbage, mini cauliflower and mini cabbage as well as a Broccoli.

All growing well thank-you very much.








This is the hard neck garlic which is the first time I've grown it and therefore have nothing to compare it to so I have no idea if it is growing well or not, but it looks good to me.










Baby cos lettuce, three in a row all ready to eat.

Luv this gardening.

Cheers and happy veggie gardening,

Stewart

Garlic Part 3

It's about time I got around to part three of the now Garlic post trilogy.

As you can see the Monaro Purple hardneck garlic I planted in the Garlic pt. 2 post on the 31st of March is well and truly on its way.

After planting care After planting your garlic it will need a good watering and from there on the soil will need to be kept moist at the least.
While garlic will tolerate dry periods it will preform best if the soil they are growing in is kept moist.

Mulching is also important to garlic for two main reasons.
The first is to assist in the watering and keeping moist (prevent drying out of) the soil it is growing in .

Second is to help suppress weed growth.

I used straw and autumn leaves that I put through the chipper for my mulch, but any of the usual suspects will do.

I'd also recommend a dose of seaweed and fish emulsion at the beginning of each month just to keep them ticking along.


Click on photo for larger view.



Harvesting and storing garlic will happen sometime in lateish summer when the top of the leaves start to yellow but before they have died right back.

Go easy when harvesting the bulbs as they do bruise easy leaving them open to rotting. It's also best if you can harvest during a dry period, so lay off the watering at least a week before harvesting if possible. This will help harden the bulbs and allow better storage.

To store, keep the leaves on the bulbs and don't separate the cloves until you need them, allow them two or three weeks to dry in an airy place out of direct sunlight.

And if you want to get really creative then you might like to try your hand at plaiting garlic softnecks only.


Finally growing problems, pest and diseases. The main issue with garlic is humidity which will go on to cause fungal disease.
If you are growing garlic in a high humidity area then space your plants a little further apart and plant and area that gets full sunshine all day.

Downy Mildew can be a problem in damp and overcast conditions. Treat accordingly or your favorite way.
There are several other problems that can occur, but if good crop rotation and plant maintenance is followed they should not be a problem.

Garlic is also good for you, so they say at Garlic Central

Garlic pt. 1
Garlic pt. 2

Well that's it for me. I could easily write a book on how to grow garlic but it's been done a few times already and I just wanted to put up and overview of growing garlic without going into too much detail.
Happy Garlic growing and if there are any questions then I'm only to happy to answer.

Garlic Part 2

After promising Garlic Pt. 2 all week, I went and got myself all inspired and decided to lead by example, ie. plant my own and explain the steps I went through.

So if you're ready I suppose I should start from the beginning.

Site selection, same as real estate, Position, position, position.
Garlic prefers a sunny position.(That was easy)






I'm planting the Hardneck variety 'Monaro Purple' today, I'll plant the Softneck variety 'Italian White' in a week or two.

The three bulbs I received from Green Harvest gave me 28 cloves which, if I planted in one straight row would be about 5mts long and at 9 cloves per bulb that should yield me somewhere around 252 cloves, fingers crossed.






Soil Preparation, is very similar to carrots where by you use a part of the garden that has been manured and enriched for a previous crop. Too much fertility and you'll get all top and no bottom.
Also the growth will be too "soft" and will be more susceptible to disease.

I was going to use my mighty Cow manure on this bed as well as the compost but after consulting a few reference books I decided against it (I didn't want to run the risk of too "soft" growth) and just added some of my best compost at a bucket full per mtq sq.





I have a slightly acid soil here and all my reference books suggested Garlic like a slightly alkaline soil so on goes the dolomite again at a hand full per/mtr sq. I should have done this about two or three weeks ago but it's not a perfect world.











The Garlic bed all dug over and ready for planting.

















Planting time? Now.
Well for me anyhow.

Garlic likes a month or two of cold weather from below 0-10 degrees Celsius and is usually planted in autumn or early winter.

It seems everyone has an opinion on when's the best time to plant and in the long run it's probably best to use local knowledge or experiment from year to year to find your best planting time.




Planting, Plant cloves 10cm (4 in) deep, spacing them 18cms (7 in) apart in rows 35(14 in) to 40 cms (16 in)apart.
Edit, 1/4/09. Some where around here I should have mentioned to plant pointy end up.


There's more to this than I thought so I'm going for a Garlic Part 3 which will include after care, Pest and Diseases, and Harvesting.

Garlic Part 1

Garlic Part 3

Garlic Part 1

Right'o, Garlic.

What got me started on Garlic was the plethora of articles popping up in the indigenous gardening magazines such as Better Homes and Gardens and Gardening Australia, plus most of the online mail order nursery's like Green Harvest and Diggers have been sending me e-mails about their garlic.

So I'm guessing it must be Garlic time.

One thing that struck me was information about Hardneck and Softneck garlic which is info I'd not come across before.
So what follows is my take on Hardneck and Softneck garlic and which witch is which.

Firstly is the softneck which is the most common garlic we all know and love and the one you are most likely to find in the supermarket.
This is because softneck garlic is easier to grow and plant mechanically and also keeps for longer than hardneck.
There are two main types of softneck garlic: silverskin and artichoke. Silverskin garlic is most common simply because it's easier to grow and keeps longer. Artichoke garlic tends to have fewer but larger cloves and a milder flavour. The artichoke garlic bulb wrappers are coarser than those of silverskins and sometimes have purple blotches.


In a nutshell softneck refers to the fact that bulbs are covered in a white outer flaky skin and it does not produce a flower stem. Simple as that.

Softneck varieties are the easiest to grow and will accept the widest variety of climates.
If you are in the slightly warmer parts of Australia then this is the one to go for. Not for the tropics though.

The variety I'm planting is Italian white from Green Harvest.
Green Harvest suggests,

'Italian White is a well-known bulb with flat, grey-green leaves; 'Italian White’ is a soft-neck type with creamy white skin, medium to large bulb with up to 17 cloves per bulb.

Worth buying just for cooking as this organic garlic has a superb flavour and will keep for many months'.

Diggers also have Australian White, Early White, Italian Red, Melbourne Market and Silverskin.

Next, or second if you like, is Hardneck varieties.

Hardneck varieties prefer a mild and cool climate with a cool spring. My springs can warm up quickly at times so I'll just have to wait and see how I go with this one.

There are three main types of hardneck garlic: rocambole, porcelain and purple stripe. Rocambole garlic usually has up to a dozen cloves of a tan or browny colour. Porcelain garlic has a satiny white wrapper and the fewest cloves in a bulb, perhaps as few as four very large cloves. Porcelain garlic is often mistaken for elephant garlic. Purple stripe garlic is highly distinctive because of its colouring, with bright purple markings.

The variety I'm growing is a Rocambole called 'Manaro Purple'. from Green Harvest who go on to say, ‘Monaro Purple’ is a hardneck or top-setting variety which is suitable only for cooler areas. It is also called a ‘rocambole’ variety from the habit the flower stem has of looping over on itself to produce a distinctive twist. Rocambole types have a sweet, nutty flavour with 6-8 cloves per bulb.


So if a softneck is defined as having no flower stem then you'd be thinking that hardnecks would have a flower stem and you'd be right, but there is a twist.

Hardneck garlics have a "scape" - (a flower stalk) that coil and bend in curious ways. On the top of this scape grow a number of bulbils which are often mistakenly referred to as garlic flowers.

To get a good description of this "scape" then "Yard and Garden News" have it explained it clearly.

Well that's it for softneck and hardneck varieties. I hope I haven't confused you anymore than I am. If you have any tips, additions, corrections or questions then please let me know.

Tomorrow I'll post some general info on soil prep and planting.

Garlic Part 2

Garlic Part 3