Garlic - ready for the deep freeze

They say you should plant garlic on the shortest day and harvest it on the longest. But December to June would, by my reckoning, be a pretty short growing season.

For a long time I was unsure when the best time to plant garlic was. Autumn, winter, or even wait until spring - I've had reasonable results after planting it in spring before? But it has been less of a mystery to me since it was explained that it's not so much the time of year that you plant garlic, it's in the timing.

Garlic likes to have some proper chilly weather after being put in the ground. Around ten days around freezing point will do nicely even if you don't see the first green shoots coming through until a month or so later. So it's not so much a case of checking the calendar for the best time to plant garlic, as looking at the weather forecast.

A couple of years ago I mistimed things completely and my garlic bulbs for planting arrived in the middle of a big freeze. The ground was iron-hard and there was no way I could get the cloves into the ground until a brief thaw just before Christmas. And a mild winter can play havoc with plans for garlic planting; perhaps the old saying should say that the latest time for planting is the shortest day ...

Garlic growing healthily in March,
after the worst of the winter
weather.

The other great garlic tip that I've found really works is to have a nice big bonfire on your garlic/onion bed - before you plant them in the ground, obviously. Once the fire has gone out and cooled down, spreading the ashes over the bed and digging it in is good for the alliums - they like a bit of potash.

My garlic - five firm fat bulbs of Solent Wight - arrived (finally) today, just before the freezing temperatures forecast for the end of this week going into the weekend. Each clove needs to be separated from the bulb and pushed into the soil, root end down, tip uppermost and 2cm or so under the surface. I tend to plant them a bit too close together: 15cm-20cm between each clove is probably best.

Specific weather conditions aside, the green spiky leaves usually surface early in the New Year. I generally leave them be after that. Some light weeding and light watering is normally all that's needed. By June, some of the spikes might develop flower buds, which are pretty, but need to be pinched out. You want your garlic plant to put its energy into developing a nice plump bulb, not making flowers.

They should be harvested when the leaves turn yellow and wilt - mine have usually developed a bit of rust by then - but it's always later than June 22, the longest day. More often the middle of July. It's important to dig up the bulbs before they split apart into separate cloves - these won't store well.

Keeping pests at bay

Garlic (Solent Wight) on the left, Egyptian walking onions behind, hopefully protecting the Chinese broccoli (kailans) and kohl rabi seedlings. The copper-lined collars prevent slugs and snails from reaching the brassica seedlings.

I planted out these heavily guarded brassica seedlings yesterday. Bitter experience has taught me that they need this level of protection. The copper-lined collars are made from sections of 500ml plastic water bottles trimmed with copper tape around the top and will deter slugs and snails. The metal reacts with the mollusc's mucus when it tries to cross the copper strip and gives it a shock-like sensation.


I've found these home-made copper rings perfectly effective and use them with brassica seedlings, cucurbit seedlings, lettuces, of course, and also globe artichokes when they are first planted out. I can still remember the heartbreak of coming home after an Easter weekend away and finding my globe artichokes, planted out on Maundy Thursday, had vanished. The only clues to their disappearance were a number of long, ribbon-like, shiny trails.


The only drawback really, apart from the need to have as many collars as you have seedlings in the ground at any one time, is that the slug/snail population isn't controlled. In a particularly sluggy year, they will go off to try to find something else to eat that's unprotected. One year I found slugs attacking the beetroot, which is not normally vulnerable. This year, with a wet April with showers interspersed with sunshine, we are on Code Red as far as slugs and snails are concerned.


The second level of protection here is the perimeter planting of various alliums. I have deliberately positioned garlic (pictured here is Solent Wight, with elephant garlic out of shot) and onions around the outside of the raised bed to deter cabbage whitefly. Alliums are often planted with carrots to deter carrot fly, as it is said that the onion smell confuses the carrot fly (and also that the reverse holds true, the carrot smell deters the onion fly who is after an allium snack). 


Here I am hoping that the same principle holds true against whitefly. If this mini-trial proves successful, and the kohl rabi and kailans in the raised bed remain relatively whitefly-free, I will extend it to the main brassica bed, where the cauliflower, broccoli and cavolo nero will be planted later in the summer. Last year, the cavolo nero in particular was horribly infested with whitefly to the point of not being able to harvest it.


Copper tape is available from larger garden centres and from a number of online gardening suppliers. It's well worth searching and shopping around as prices can vary widely. Copper rings are also available but tend to be much more expensive while performing exactly the same function as the homemade rings here. For a copper ring with a larger diameter cut sections from a 2l water bottle.

Clockwise from top left: cut an empty water bottle into sections; take the mid-section and line with copper tape, tucking the ends over the rim to make a neat edge.