The Garlic Farm Cookbook is an informative new collection of recipes which also contains a lot of useful cultural information. There are two different kinds of garlic.
Hard necks: these varieties are hardier than soft necks. They produce a flower stalk which should be chopped off so that the plant’s energy goes into making a larger bulb.
Soft necks: These keep less well than hard necks and are sometimes eaten ‘green’. They have many culinary uses but are particularly good raw in salad dressings.
The cookbook has a very useful guide to the garlic year. Here is an abbreviation, covering autumn and early winter:
September: Plant elephant garlic, early varieties: ‘Early Purple Wight’, ‘Early Wight’. Apply general purpose fertilizer to the soil, or some well-rotted manure, well worked in.
October: Plant autumn soft necks: ‘Iberian’, ‘Albigensian‘, ‘Mediterranean’, ‘Provence’. Plant in November too.
November: Plant autumn hard necks: ‘Purple Moldovan’, ‘Chesnok’.
December: ‘Lautrec’ can be planted now.
Tags: growing garlic, Vegetable Garden