Garlic needs some very cold weather before the spring comes along if it’s to grow well, so the snow and ice we’re having right now makes this the perfect time to get it started.
You can buy individual cloves for planting from a garden centre, but we’re going to experiment with a much cheaper option: four cloves from a regular bulb bought from the supermarket.
We use quite a lot of garlic in our cooking, so always have a bulb or two in the outhouse. They cost about 30p each, so taking half of one gives us four chances to get a small crop of our own for just 15p.
The ground is very hard right now, and we’re having trouble even digging in the chickens’ waste to fertilise the soil, so instead we filled two large pots with compost left over from last year’s tomatoes and put two cloves in each, around 3cm (an inch and a half) deep. Happily settled, we covered them over and gave them a good watering.
We’ve now put them outside to get properly cold on the stones behind the chicken coop where they’ll drain well. Last night we had a proper fall of snow, leaving a good inch or so all over the plot – including on top of the garlic pots, which is an excellent start.
With any luck they should be ready to harvest in the summer.
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We grow about a hundred bulbs every year, if not more, and save some to replant the cloves again. It’s great we nownever have to buy any Garlic at all. It is a very easy crop and the Chicken fertiliser really helps them grow fantastically well.
Good luck.
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