Garlic, done!

Ever wonder what would happen if you planted a garlic clove upside down?

 

Does rust persist in the bulbs? (Its probably a stoopid question!)

 

Not done bad, Sis isn't happy that i'm keeping the biggest ones for re planting, wants me to use the small ones but i'm not having it.

 

Ah, I see. Good plan. Maybe the mild winter wasn;t cold enough to cause the planted cloves to split?

I planted fresh stock last Autumn (due to storage cockup!), and bought not particularly late, but not early either. I winged at prices of Garlic Farm, but more importantly that they only sold 4-bulb qty, whereas I wanted (or thought I wanted) 2-bulb. I bought from three different suppliers, including some bogoff deals. All shipped at least half my order late, and some substituted part, so clearly they did not have stock of what they listed on their website. Quality was OK, but variable.

If I was restocking again I'd bite the bullet and get the Garlic Farm ones - even if half of them were used in the kitchen rather than garden ...

 

According to my Garlic Book, the very biggest bulbs are not the best to save. I'll have a look for it.

 

I wonder if I will this year too ... or if I will overcome that feeling?!!

 

Although ... I take the view that I should be able to re-use my self-saved bulbs for years, so periodically buying in new stock it makes sense to buy "quality". Even if twice the price, amortised over a number of years, and thousands of cloves of garlic!, its only the initial pain that I need to get over.

My experience buying from Big Name Seed Companies, last Autumn, were that they are just buying in, don't have a proper stock-level reporting system on their web sites so, unless first-in-the-queue, no guarantee that you are going to get what you ordered / in a timely fashion.

So this year I might bite the bullet