Garlic has been with us since Roman times – just visit any Italian restaurant to get an understanding of how central the flavour is to their dishes. At Glanbrydan (in West Wales) we love to use it in our own cooking as well as adding it to many of the fillings of the baked pasties and pies we sell.
As a child in the UK in the 1970s our home didn’t entertain garlic as an ingredient; my garlic initiation happened when we went to visit friends of my parents who were well travelled. I didn’t know it at the time but the wonderful smell that permeated their house was created by the addition of garlic to almost everything they cooked.
Garlic is also thought to help dogs keep the fleas away. We make up our dogs food so it’s easy to add a few cloves. A liver and garlic cake can also be made by gently cooking up some liver with chopped garlic and then whizzing it in the food processor. The liver should be shaped in little pots, kept in the fridge and fed to the dogs sparingly. It’s safe to say most dogs love it.
There is a great range of garlic bulbs in the gardening shops all ready to break up and pop in the ground. For any UK gardener garlic is a safe bet. We have lived in South Northamptonshire and in rural mid-Wales, both being areas where the hardy little bulbs flourish. The shop bought ones are not really suitable for growing on unless you know they have come out of the ground locally – only buy via a retailer such as a farmer’s market where they won’t have anything nasty sprayed on them to stop them deteriorating. I have tried to grow the shop bought ones over several years and always had disappointing results.
Garlic is best planted early to give it a long growing season. I like to get some in the ground in November followed by some in pots in the greenhouse in January. They don’t mind getting cold but a little shelter in a cold frame helps them to put down some early roots.
If you are starting them in little pots then yogurt tubs or 3 inch pots are a good option. Open up the bulb as you would for cooking but leave the skin on; each little clove is a potential head of garlic.
Fill the pots with good compost and sink the little heads so the tops are just visible and firm the soil gently around them. Add a bit of water and let them enjoy some protected spring sunshine in the glasshouse. Ours normally go outside about May time – it’s very wet here so they need help with keeping their roots above drowning level. We use old car tyres filled with compost, earth, stone and wood chippings topped up with wood burner ash every now and then.
When planting outdoors it’s better not to push the bulbs in the ground but sink them into loose earth allowing the roots to take hold without having to break through a hard barrier of soil. Firm up around them by pressing down with your hands and then watch and wait. I plant my bulbs just a few inches apart.
They take all summer to plump up and the best time to harvest is late August/September time. The heads need pulling out the ground on a dry day when the stalks have started to yellow. We leave the stems on and plait them together as the French do. Hang them in a dark, cool and dry cupboard to store. If you have the room you can grow enough to last all year.
Quite by accident we discovered what we call ‘ever lasting’ garlic. You need a little space that isn’t dug over every year or walked on – a shrub border is good. You also need patience as they need three years to establish themselves. Plant up a few cloves in a circle and let them be. In a couple of years the cloves will have spread out. When you have lots of stalks carefully remove a few of the outer bulbs at harvest time. The ones left should keep multiplying.
The worst garlic pests we have are our chickens. Our girls love to find neat little shoots to pull out of the ground – to them it’s almost a challenge. As ours are in tyres with brought-in earth under them it’s chickentastic soil for making great dust baths once they have removed the garlic, worms and insects. The chickens will be moving away from the vegetable beds very shortly or we will be falling out!
Sam would like to add that with all the strange weather conditions last winter, her everlasting garlic all died down and she thought she’d lost it. However it has started to regrow so she’s hopefull it will recover. She’s also found someone who ran an everlasting onion patch!