No... I am not Italian..but I do love to use fresh garlic in the kitchen.
Last year my fellow gardeners told me that garlic was really easy to grow.
So... I looked up some information and talked to friends and decided
to try some Italian soft neck garlic because I wanted the kind that you could use
to braid...you know those pictures of big bunches of braided garlic
hanging in Italian kitchens. Well...I wanted that.
So I ordered some heirloom bulbs last September and planted them in the potato patch..
after I cleared off the mulch and dug my potatoes.
I don't remember how much I ordered, but there were several bulb clusters and I separated them into individual cloves for planting. I ended up with about 24 I think. After planting them in one row about 12 in apart, and several inches deep...kind of like onion sets, I sprinkled some fertilizer around and covered the whole bed up with straw mulch about a foot deep.
And...then didn't do a thing until I dug them up this summer...sometime
in July I think..the tops had started to die back.
Above you can see a close up shot of what I had left..after digging, drying, and using in the kitchen all summer long. Each clove yielded about a dozen more!!
How easy is that?
Now it is time to start a tradition..and plant them again. It is October..you know.
I picked out the largest three..you can see them here
They don't look so impressive in the picture...but they were all nice sized cloves.
I separated them and then decided I should plant some more .
Koko agreed.
After choosing some more bulbs...I ended up with about 112 cloves.
Will we have garlic next year? I certainly hope so...I really do want to try braiding some.
I planted them in the tomato patch..it was time to tear it up...see below.
Don't you agree?
