Lifting the Garlic

Tradition has it that garlic is planted on the shortest day of the year and harvested on the longest. Garlic is grown by 'sowing' the individual cloves; they need a period of cold at the start of the growing season in order to trigger splitting of the growing head into multiple cloves, rather than simply growing into one bigger clove, as is the case with onions. I don't claim to understand the science but have previously harvested garlic where many of the heads were no more than a single fat clove, following a mild winter. This past winter was very, very dry, but we had plenty of sub zero nights so I was confident the heads would contain multiple cloves but I could already see that they were pretty small, thanks to that dry winter. My other big worry is the allium leaf miner fly - see my post about leeks for more info on this pest. 

Lifting garlic is a pretty simple job, but be aware that the post harvest drying period is essential for keeping your harvest right through the year. With a heatwave in progress and the thermometer heading into the high thirties and more critically no rain forecast in the next five days, I decided to ignore the anti-canicule advice to stay indoors and went out and got the job done. The leaves begin to turn from green to yellow when the garlic is ready to harvest; mine has started this process and with the hot weather I doubt they'll grow any bigger.

The garlic has been subjected to the straw mulch treatment and I was really please to find the ground positively moist when I pulled the mulch back, and with few slugs. At least the digging wouldn't be like trying to crack concrete!





It is important to get the fork beneath both the bulbs and the bulk of the roots - they are very shallow rooted - and carefully lift. Obviously putting the fork through the head means the bulb won't dry, but the same applies to damaging the roots and the base plate of the bulb. It is therefore important to carefully tease each bulb out of the ground and then gently remove the excess soil from the roots.

Once lifted, the garlic needs to be racked out to allow it to start the drying process; once the leaves are dry and rustling the bulbs can be strung up ready for storage. You can of course eat the fresh, or 'green' garlic straight away. We will be having garlic curry this week, a once a year only treat!

I use a pallet to lay the garlic out, the advantage being that I can lift the whole lot up and move it under cover if needed. You can also plait the fresh green garlic on the day of harvest, if you like. I prefer to dry flat to start with because then I can spot any that have any potential drying problems before I've tied them all up.

But a few plaits of garlic hanging up in the kitchen ready for use are just great!

Tomato 'Armpits'

The tomatoes have been quite slow to take off this spring - the mostly cold weather has not been to their liking but today they finally needed their first tidy up and prune.

The bulk of my plants are being grown as single cordons up string (see Tomato Planting here) so the plants require removal of any side shoots to keep them straight and tidy. At each point above the joint where a leaf leaves the main stem tomates send out a side shoot. In their native habitat they are plants that like to ramble and scramble through other plants, but we need to keep them under control and as open and uncluttered as possible. Limiting the amount of foliage allows sunlight to better reach the fruits and ripen them and allows air to circulate, reducing the risk of blight and disease.

The photo above is of a very vigorous black cherry tomato; the already quite large side shoots are indicated by the red arrows. These are what we need to remove, either using a sharp pair of secateurs or simply pinching out the smaller ones with thumb and finger. Be aware that if deeply planted, the lowest side shoots may appear from just below the soil surface.

The best thing about these side shoots - or tomato armpits as they are called in my household! - is that they can be easily rooted to increase your stock.

As with taking any cutting, it is crucial to get the cut plant into either a pot of compost or water, or at least a plastic bag as soon as it has been cut: because it no longer has roots it will lose water and wilt very, very fast. Here I have prepared my pot of compost and an old blunt knife to act as a dibber before I've cut the armpits.

With side shoots cut (using sharp secateurs to ensure a clean cut) I then make a hole right up against the edge of the pot and push the side shoot right down. I want as much stem as possible in contact with the compost because tomatoes will produce roots from any part of the stem that comes into contact with the soil and not just the base. The more roots the plant can quickly produce, the more chance it has of surviving!

I've put three in this pot and you can see the cutting on the left is deeper than the first leaf.

Remember to label the pot; these are San Marzano, a plum variety for bottling. A couple of my original plants are not growing on well, so assuming these cuttings take and do well, I may replace them, or find a home elsewhere. You cannot have too many tomato plants!

Finally, water well whilst trying not to get the leaves wet, and put in a shady place.

This pallet table on legs houses the bulk of my seedlings and young plants beyond the reach of slugs and snails. It lives in the dappled shade of a honeysuckle but can be moved out into full sun or under the shelter of the covered terrace when thunderstorms threaten. 

Roots should be visible out of the bottom of the pot within about a fortnight, but you will know if the plant has taken after a week or so as it will still be alive. Once the plants have a healthy root ball you can pot them on into individual pots or just straight into the ground.

Leeks and Allium Leaf Miner

We are at the peak of gardening season at the moment, with so much weeding, dead-heading, tying-in and the seemingly endless mowing and strimming for clients that my own garden has threatened to get out of control. It is a good job that I like the natural rambling look! Although I wish the bindweed and brambles would stick to the hedges where we can appreciate them.

The big jobs for June are lifting the garlic and planting the leeks; both are jobs that I find daunting yet in reality are pretty speedy as long as I'm organised. 

The garlic will stand for another week or so, but this weekend was time to plant out the leeks. When we first came house hunting it was a dank December, but every garden seemed to have a load of leeks; they will happily put up with drought, freezing temperatures and a blanket of snow. And they are so versatile in the kitchen: I love leeks!

The leek bed (empty bed on the left) has stood empty over winter with just a top dressing of compost and then a duvet of straw to keep the weed seeds from germinating and protect the soil from the winter rain. 

This is my first year using the straw mulch and one disadvantage I've come across is that the soil can be wet, heavy and cold below the duvet. My squash plants have been incredibly slow to get away this year and I suspect that may be the cause. Last week I pulled back the straw covering on the leek bed to let the sun - illusive as it was - get some warmth into the ground. 

The ground was almost completely weed free so the amount of preparation has been minimal, just digging out the worst of the mole runs, particularly the main highway they always establish down both sides of the beds. We are between moles at present: I trapped one in the live trap last week and relocated it a kilometre or so up the road and over the other side of the river! It was a good sized animal but had only been in the trap a short time as I'd checked it less than an hour previously. I tolerate moles everywhere bar the potager,but given that I have the best worms in there a new resident usually turns up pretty quickly!

I sow my leeks in a large pot some time in late February or early March and although the books always say plant them out when they've reached the size of a pencil, mine rarely get that big and yet can often grow into leeks the size of my arm. They get planted once they're big enough to handle and have stopped growing on in the pot, presumably because they've run out of food. I've two varieties this year, Musselburgh, a Scottish variety that stands really well in the cold and wet, and Long de Mézières, a more delicate long-shafted, cold-resistant variety from near Rennes in Brittany.

 Leeks are planted by simply dropping them into a hole made with a dibber and then watering well. I add a little compost into the hole after planting simply to protect any exposed roots from the sun. Using a straight edge bit of wood I first make my holes in rows, usually in batches of about thirty at a time.

I then turn the pot of baby plants out into a shallow tray of water which allows me to tease the individual plants apart without damaging the roots. One plant is dropped into each hole and may have to be encouraged into the hole with the dibber, especially if there are a lot of roots. Some people advocate trimming the roots but I've never quite seen the point: plants need roots, especially when they've just been tranplanted. I then give each plant a good water, filling the hole with water, which should also wash it down to the bottom of the hole. I then drop in a little compost and water  briefly again. There is no need to fill the hole with soil; the leek will slowly grow into it!

Apart from watering in really dry weather and keeping the ground weeded there is little more to do - birds will sometimes pull the tiny plants out, so just drop any back in as before. However, and it is a huge however, if you live in an area infested with a pest called allium leaf miner you will need to protect your crop from these tiny flies. The female lays her eggs on the base of the plant and the little maggots eat the growing plant.  A small amount of damage is tolerable, but rotting and infection can become a problem. Plus, as I know to my cost, a small number of pests will become an infestation after  a couple of seasons.

The flies have two cycles per year, the first overwintering as pupae before emerging and laying eggs in March through to June and then those offspring repeating the process again from September to November. 







I have bought an anti-insect mesh which will cover the leeks from planting until the beginning of July and then again from September.

The garlic is similarly vulnerable and spent the danger period under a couple of old net curtains, although I had to remove it in May as the plants were too big. Fingers crossed my garlic has escaped the fly; I'll find out in the next week or so.

Comfrey - Tea, Bees, Butterflies and Plant Thuggery.

As a trying-to-be-self-sufficient gardener I make my own fertiliser from both wild plants growing of their own volition on the plot and from plants that I've introduced. Nettles fit the first criteria - any gardener should try to have a nettle patch in a tucked away corner, behind the shed or at the back of the garage perhaps, because it is an important food plant for the caterpillars of butterflies such as small tortoiseshell, peacock, red admiral and the comma, one of my favourites. 

It is pretty straightforward to make a quick release liquid fertiliser by steeping nettle leaves in water, having checked for caterpillars before picking the leaves, of course. The leaves are high in potassium and nitrogen, essential for growth and flowering.

Comfrey, however is higher in potassium than nettles and once you have an established clump is quick and easy to turn into fertiliser. Be very wary of the term established clump, because unless you use the recommended sterile bocking 14 variety you may well end up with established clumps all over the place. 

I rashly bought seed rather than sterile plants, working on the principle that as we have a pretty big plot letting the beast self-seed all over the place wouldn't be a problem. I then planted my new little plants at one end of my asparagus bed! This was a very, very bad idea as weeding an asparagus bed is difficult enough, but comfrey seems able to put down a huge woody tap root within seconds of germinating and I am beginning to lose the battle. It is also appearing elsewhere in the potager and completely resists being dug out.