Tag Archives: White Elephant Garlic

Sowing is sweet during lunchtimes

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As we’re working from home we do have a bit of an advantage that we can do a litle bit of gardening at lunchtime during good weather. Today as it was on the warmer side we decided to sow a few more seeds. The kitchen window has become a little crowded so we utilised some spare space in the raised beds under plastic out in the back.

The second covered raised bed is starting to fill up too. The celery cut from the base is starting to grow, those volunteer giant garlic bulbs are doing well and we have some parsnips in the middle so we decided to put some pots of sweet peas either side. Hope they like the heat under the plastic as we haven’t had decent sweet peas for a few years now. The below pic is going back a few years but it is inspiring us to have some sweet peas back in the garden again.

Ain’t it sprung yet?

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Sunday was lovely for a spot of gardening after a rather wet and windy Saturday. The lawn was cut, the beds got a bit of a tidy up and we even got caried away sowing some borage under the tree. It’ll probably won’t be the best spot for them and God knows if they’ll even germinate as it may have been sunny Sunday but who knows what the future weather has got in store for us.

And we even had a peek under the plastic covered raised bed and the elephant garlic is coming on a bit and the foxgloves that were once plugs have even survived after a bit of a change from the warmth of the kitchen windowsill to outside in the freezing cold.

Come Monday morning it was back to the cold weather again and we went down to the compost heap to stick a couple of tea bags in and to give it a turn. What was well suprising was how much heat was generated in the heap even overnight with the grass clippings, there was even a bit of steam coming off the heap after forking it over. Covering the heap with cardboard certainly keeps the heat in. Let’s hope we can get out there again this Sunday.

And here’s a wonderful tune for a Wednesday night from Les Mamans du Congo & Rrobin called Loango Weaver. It’s from last years set “A Guide to the Birdsong of Western Africa by Various Artists” well worth checking out here.

Meanwhile back in the garden…

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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.