Hello, I'm Liam, and it's the second week of October and today I'm going to be planting my
garlic. I like to plant my garlic at this time of year because it gives time for the garlic
to germinate, which although it won't grow much over the winter months, will mean that
it will get going quickly in the spring, and hopefully will lead to a bigger harvest. Garlic
is relatively slow growing, so even though I'm planting it in October, normally i won't harvest
it until the middle of the year in June. There are different techniques for growing garlic, but
what I'm sharing in this video is the technique that has worked for me over the last few years.
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So, let's get going. The garlic I'm planting is my homegrown garlic. These bulbs here I
grew this summer, and I'm hoping this variety will grow well because it should be adapted to
the conditions here. To plant the garlic, all I need to do is to break apart the bulbs, and plant
each individual clove about six inches apart. So, let's do that now. I'm breaking apart the garlic,
and what I'm looking for are the biggest bulbs. Something like that is a good size,
it's almost the width of my thumb, and it goes the same way up as it grew. This is the top of
the garlic bulb. It used to be a green leafy stem, and this is the bulb that grew beneath the soil.
And each individual clove has a little bit of root at the end, which goes down into the soil, with
the tip pointing up towards the sky. I'm hoping I'll get quite a few garlic plants off each bulb.
The first bulb has given me all these cloves. Let's have a count: one, two, three, four,
five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, and all are a good size. What I also do is check that
none of the cloves are soft. If they're soft, they may be rotten inside. I also
want to discard any cloves which are too small. Small cloves may not grow into healthy plants.
All I need to do now is to break apart some more of the bulbs, and then I'll have
all the cloves I need for planting. These ones here are a really good size as well,
I never know what I'm going to find until I break apart the cloves.
A quick word on garlic varieties. There are three main types. Hardneck varieties:
these varieties produce a flower stem, or scape, in late spring which can be picked and eaten,
before the plant goes on to produce garlic bulbs.
The bulbs tend to be large, but commonly do not store as well as softneck varieties.
Softneck varieties: these varieties typically produce smaller bulbs than hardneck types,
and do not develop a scape. The big advantage of softneck varieties is their storage ability.
If hung, dried, and kept in cool (not cold) dry conditions, they can store for many months.
The cloves I'm planting in this video are a softneck variety called Provence White, that
in a good year will grow relatively large in size for a softneck type. And lastly, elephant garlic:
elephant garlic is a member of the onion family, but more closely related to a leek. I've found I
need to plant the bulbs a little deeper than other garlic types for them to reach their full size.
They are delicious baked, but for general cooking, I prefer the flavour of traditional garlic.
This bed is where I'll be planting the garlic. A few weeks ago, both of these beds contained
my potatoes. I've already dug over the bed, and levelled it, and a few minutes ago I went over it
with a hoe, just to take the heads off a few weeds that were growing. I'm going to be using weed
control fabric to keep the weeds down, and cutting holes in it to plant the garlic cloves through it.
I use weed control fabric because garlic is a slow growing crop. Garlic grows tall,
about a couple of feet tall, but doesn't provide any shade, which means that it gives plenty
of opportunity for weeds to grow up around it, which can be a particular problem in the spring.
I find using weed control fabric really helps reduce my work. The next job is
cutting holes in it for the garlic. It is a biodegradable weed fabric, which means that
it will degrade to nothing. It will last about the lifetime of the plants.
By the time the sun gets to it in the spring and early summer, it will naturally start to
fall away, but the good thing is that will be enough time to suppress the weed growth.
It's quite a light fabric, and I've stretched it out over the bed, but not too tight to run the
risk of it ripping if there's a stone underneath it. And that's it. That's all the squares cut.
If I just pan around to show that. This bed is 120 centimeters wide, and 240 centimeters long,
and I managed to fit five rows in, with 13 squares cut in each row,
so 65 spaces for garlic cloves in total, which should be plenty for this year.
And I'll just show how I'm going to plant them.
I'm going to use a hand trowel to push the handle into the soil to a depth of about three inches,
and then I'm going to take a garlic clove, making sure I've got the garlic clove the right way up,
so the part with a flattened end is where the roots are, so that goes down,
and then the tip goes up pointing towards the sky. And then, once I drop that into the hole,
the clove itself will take up one inch, which will mean that there'll be two inches of soil
above it. I like to plant my garlic relatively deep, because I have sandy soil. I reckon I get
bigger bulbs that way, because the bulbs have some water, some moisture in the soil, to grow with.
I'll just show how to do this one. I just push that in,
then I'll take the clove, and just drop it in.
There we go. And I might loosely cover the top of the hole with some earth.
Now, I'm planting this clove at the start of October.
The soil is moist, but not freezing cold, but I'm anticipating growth will be relatively slow.
Hopefully at some point during November, I'll see the shoots starting to come up.
I'll just plant another clove, push the handle in, so it's about three inches deep,
take a garlic clove, making sure I've got it the right way up,
drop that in, loosely cover with some soil, and that's it. Because the soil is moist, and at this
time of year we're never too far away from a rain shower, there's no need to water them in.
And that's it. That's all the garlic cloves planted. All that remains is to cover the
garlic bed with a net, because in previous years, birds have taken interest in the onion
sets and garlic I've planted, and I know that by covering with a net the birds won't come
along and pull up the garlic cloves. Birds won't eat the garlic cloves, but by pulling them up,
it still stops them growing. I've used butterfly netting to protect the garlic.
Any kind of netting will do. This is quite a narrow gauge. It doesn't need to be this narrow.
This quite fine gauge would stop pollinating insects getting inside, but that's not an issue
with garlic, it doesn't need to be pollinated. The netting only needs to stay on until the garlic has
germinated, and got to maybe two or three inches in height. After that, there's no danger of the
garlic being pulled up by the birds, and the net can be removed and used for something else.
So that's it, the garlic fully planted, and ready for the onset of winter.
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