Dry Heat

Stuck indoors today because of the rain (hurray)  gives me the opportunity  to review recent progress.  The garlic crops, both winter and  spring plantings have been a bit underwhelming.  The autumn planted Elephant Garlic and home saved Early Purple Wight and Doocot I feel more forgiving toward. The spring planted Mersley Wight and  Solent Wight  got all the room and feed they required but turned yellow in early July. Digging them up they were small, showed signs of white rot and in many case developed as two stems intertwined below ground level.  While I will continue to grow my own Elephant garlic I don't think the return on the traditional sized garlic is worth it on my plot. Lesson learnt.  The picture shows the portion of the harvest that  justified storage.  Elephant garlic on the left, other autumn planted middle and spring planted on the right. The more fiddly smaller bulbs are still drying off in the greenhouse awaiting assessment for rot and suitability for cooking. 

Despite the heat and dry conditions the brassica patch seems to be full and ready for the coming (cooler) brassica season. The thin row is Swedes.  To the right are the winter harvested kales.  Now that we have had rain I am confident that they will survive to maturity.

Although a bit out of date this last picture is indicative of what is harvesting now.  Broad beans have been great and I have staggered further sowings.  Courgettes are now harvesting in torrents. Peas have been great this year, and again I have further plantings to come. Raspberries have been ripening daily. That is one days worth of ripened berries.

 So all in all I have been very happy with the produce so far this year, even though drought conditions have prevailed until yesterday.  

Home Improvements

The elephant garlic has dried up enough to plait the "keepers".  I am happy to report an improvement on my usual laughable attempts to do so.  This is courtesy of an internet search for instructions. (How did we manage without it?)

My ordinary garlic got the same treatment.  From the picture you would think they were  the same size!  A side by side shot reveals all:

Only the best bulbs are plaited for storage. There are plenty not so perfect bulbs to keep us going for a month or two.

Soon it will be the onions turn.  It is looking like a large crop.  Fortunately they are much easier  to string, because unlike the plaited garlic they are hanging off a string!  

Garlic Eaters

All Strung Up

I've been honing my plaiting and stringing techniques recently. Here's my celebratory picture.

2013 - Early Alliums

Top left is Elephant Garlic. Last year from one clove I got one bulb. From that bulb of six cloves I got 6 bulbs this year . This autumn I'll plant 10 to 12 cloves... Maybe we can eat the other three bulbs!  Is this a Fibonacci sequence I wonder?  Probably just a geometric progression(?).

The garlic has to be plaited, and my technique did improve from the small ones I started with to the Early Purple Wight  which were the largest (aside from the Elephant Garlic) Shallots and Onions need to be strung rather than just plaited. The results were really quite pleasing:

That's Shallot

Shenshyu Yellow - a keeper

Next to be stung will be the red onions which have been fantastic this year. We are rapidly running out of places to hang alliums. A nice problen to have!