Giulio Sturla about the simple joy of growing your own garlic.
By Giulio Sturla
The rule is, plant your garlic cloves the shortest day of the year and pick them the longest day of the year. Of course, it depends on which hemisphere you live in, here in New Zealand winter solstice is usually on the 21st of june and summer solstice around the 21st of december.
In our terraced garden we decided to experiment with 15 garlic plants, two different varieties (there are hard neck and soft neck garlic) and after a snowy winter, strong northerly winds and a few birds trying to get the cloves out of the ground, we have succeed with a great crop of 12 plants and decided for the next year that is going to be just hard neck garlic from the organic farm in port robinson, Dave has being growing for a long time and I got the cloves from him (The Port)
I had calculated around one head of garlic a week, so minimum 52 in a terrace bed of 10 m2.
Now the plan is let the garlic dry completely, about a month, and then braid them for a beautiful presentation.
