A trial harvest of Garlic

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Well, the advice given for my “Mikulov Wight” garlic was to harvest in July, and it’s now July so I have pulled some up to see how it has performed!

Many of you will remember that I have been growing my garlic in black plastic crates. It was planted on 5th October, as described HERE. I chose the crate with only 4 plants in it for the trial harvest (the others have 5 each).

Anxious moments of anticipation…! Then the big reveal:

Hmm. Disappointingly small. I had hoped for better. Still, they look to be in good condition and have a very pungent aroma.

In the light of this trial harvest I think I will leave the other three crates for another couple of weeks or so, in the hope that the bulbs will swell a bit more.

Meanwhile, I shall put the four harvested bulbs to dry in my big coldframe with all the vents open.

Looking on the bright side, even these small bulbs are bigger than the ones I produced on the only occasion I grew garlic in the past, so that’s progress of a sort! I think the real problem is that my garden is too shady. Even the best parts of it only get full sun for about half of the day. I also reckon that the containers I used were a bit too small – more depth would have been a good thing.

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