Meanwhile back in the garden…

This week we bought six giant White Elephant Garlic from a nursery in Wales off ebay. We’ve been growing Garlic for a few years now and never seem to get the size that you do in the shops, so we thought if we bought some giant variety and even if we weren’t successful and got half sized giant ones we’d be happy. They are some size though, Yorkshire teabag for comparison

On the ebay site we bought them from mentioned you can eat the scapes (the tender stem and flower bud) too. “Chop into pieces and sauteé in butter or oil for about 5 – 6 minutes and serve like a green bean or add to salads and stir fries. Roast or BBQ the scapes whole and serve like garlicky asparagus with an ailoli dip or just some balsamic and olive oil.” You learn something new every day! Here’s some good tips about growing Garlic here.

Do(ing) it properly

And as we said in the last missive, we’re going to post up stuff to remind ourselves where and when we’ve put plants & seeds in as it’s handy for us to know that sort of thing (as we usually forget!)

When the sun was out yesterday a couple of cloves of the garlic (Marco) we got at Shannon’s were popped into the South Suburban planter we found in a skip which has a couple of Egyptian onions seedlings in there already.

The onions sets we got too were put in today (when it didn’t rain) by the silver birch and the lone lettuce from the Thomson and Morgan seed trials. On the left is the Autumn Champion and Electric Red on the right. Apart from putting those in, it was just a little bit of tipping around and the odd bit of weeding. At least we know where we’ve put stuff now!

By the way, Happy Autumn Equiknoxx to all for tomorrow!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4mGB-qFryZg

What a difference an hour makes

Last weekend another hour was spent out in the garden in the cold and damp but it was worth it. As you can see the beds at the left-hand side of the garden were looking initially untidy. After about an hours work they now look half reasonable. There’s overwintering garlic in the end of the bed nearest the fence and opposite that some rhubarb being forced under an upturned tub with bricks on it. Underneath the plank that’s come off the raised bed is a pregnant frog! The question is will it be nice enough weather to finish the remaining bed by the pond at the bottom of the garden this weekend?

Talking of rhubarb (Above: the result of forcing the plant a couple of years ago; lovely red stalks!) in an old gardening book we once learnt about a place called the Rhubarb Triangle (aka The Tusky Triangle) in West Yorkshire where the plant in grown and forced in dark barns and picked by candlelight (as not to turn the stalks green). Fact not fiction! More about that here and here.