How to Grow Garlic

How to Grow Garlic Growing Tips and Advice

https://www.thegarlicfarm.co.uk/growing/tips-and-advice

Has a really handy growing calendar.

i planted a few cloves of garlic last year and picked them about a month ago when it started to flower, the bulbs were small but it had formed a full crown, was v nice , will do more this september.

Hey,

Yum yum  , I think this year I will try some Elephant Garlic in a raised bed that has some space left and see how it goes.

do give some compost like the  tip says, mine went in right where potatoes went last year with nothing added on clay soil, left it to its own devices and all i planted survived though didnt get full sized, its certainly viable , easy to grow,can keep all year, you can grow alot in small area. 12 large bulbs would probably do me for a year

Have you tried a cloche to extend the season, or start the soil warming in feb/march?, could be they didn't fill out due to the soil being clay,ish and colder for that extra month stunting growth.

I moved some good composted soil from 3 year old chippings/leaves into the raised beds to make space for a 'non permanent structure' 20x6 workspace, and filled the beds 70/30 with the top 30% being a mix of organic soil, perlite and vermiculite. I may scrape the top 30% around Sept time and add some of the dried chickens manure and then reapply the loose 30% top soil.

yes theres alot i could do, will give some attention this year , ive been making lots of compost to revive the soil. Its really bad and had been left several years before i took it on , all crops were small last year so much so that i hardly bothered this year and have been concentrating on making as much compost as possible and landscaping , pond is looking really good since i added a small solar pump.
 Rassberrys have done well, they dont seem to mind v poor conditions to thrive , have had a few Kg this year. So im thinking mostly fruit bushes and fruit trees would be best suited to the conditions. Then just use the best soil area for other things.

Fair enough, not really sure on the best way to deal with clay,ish soil as I have been pretty lucky with the places I have grown, I guess your approach of just keep working compost into it is probably the best way short of removing a load of soil. assassin might know of a better way.

One option that may work is to make some raised beds with 2x4 and stake the corners and just hammer them straight into the ground which would at least give you 4 inches of no clay soil. I live next to a big park and it is riddled with raspberry bushes, just waiting for them to ripen and then going to pick a load to make some jam and freeze whatever is left over.

What is your plan for the pond, auquaponics?.

One suggestion re raised beds ,

This year i have started to cover my garden with a membrane & containerize everything ( due to an accident i have probs with bending so weeding a prob)

The one I bought on ebay is made of the same material as the one ton bags ,only in black,it has a 30 year guarantee & drains well. Should be ideal for raised beds if stapled to a wooden frame and a lot cheaper than timber sides. I have already used it for the sides of a compost heap.

Good idea daveiron, I had a little look and it looks like you can get just big grow bed bags as well,





This is how I put mine together but, it cost about £100 for 2 at 2x5 feet including stones and just normal weed fabric,

the pond is just for the aesthetics and wild life its just a tarp lined hole 3feet or so round and about 15inches deep in the middle, got a few goldfish and frogs, yorkshire stone surround ,lillys,reeds,marshy wild plants and grass collected from walks around it.Going to make a bigger pond which will be used for aquaponics.Im about to start digging it out ,should go now but its too wet :/

Dave if you do quite shallow beds that should be good ,stitch your own grow bags on a big scale.I might take that route . Thanks for the idea!

Looked at my purchased history 4mts x 25 mts = £39.99
fabricated my own ground staples from 6mm round bar .all working perfectly

Improving the soil is easy for garlic, and it can all be recycled and FREE and like Lopsum my favourite word if FREE.

When people empty out their hanging baskets and tubs you get them to bag it up and give it to you, you then break it up and remove all the plants and roots and place on the compost heap and urinate on it, you take the compost and pile it up on your plot and mix with manure and stand for a year in the elements so the frost attacks it.

Scoop all your topsoil off an area and dig out the clay to a depth of 1 1/2 spits and mix the topsoil with some of the compost mixture in the early spring and replace the clay with it, you can also add home made compost and leaf mould if you have a compost heap and access to a mature wood to gather leaf mould.

If you have a rotovator and dont mind spending a little you remove the topsoil and buy some perlite or vermiculite and some sand, rotovate the clay to break it up and add and add the sand/perlite mixture and rotovate again to mix it with the clay as sand breaks down clay and turns it into soil. You can then proceed as above.

Never dig clay topsoil. A truly pointless endeavour that simply mixes subsoil and what there is of topsoil together. thus making the topsoil more impoverished. No need to remove anything if you are smart about it.
In fact never dig. Go look at charles dowdings website to see no dig gardening in action.
https://www.charlesdowding.co.uk/

Watch this fella's video to see how to really improve clay topsoil really easily with a minimum of effort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6rPPUmStKQ4

yes i have seen this charles guy and recommended it to dave on the other site .

Ive read that clay soil can be turned round by digging in copious amounts of gypsum and other things but that would be an immense task for the whole plot.
so much easier to start again on top , some areas will be ok to dig compost in .

i dont mind a bit of digging , its good exercise.

Nobody mentioned clay topsoil.

assassin wrote:Nobody mentioned clay topsoil.

Oh darling you are so right. Everyone mentions soil. How remiss of me.

Please note there are two layers in soil. Topsoil where all the 'growing activity' takes place and the sub soil which supports the topsoil. Digging by spade or plow mixes the two to the detriment of both.
It always amazes me how otherwise sane people will ignore what is right in front of their eyes as evidence of the way things are, farmers are the most blinkered of all. This is not a sleight on anyone simply an observation so keep the red pen in the drawer.

Nature builds soil from above. Walk anywhere and use the eyes to see how natures piles up 'the crap' essential to life. Makes no difference where the eyes look the evidence of how soil is built is everywhere and yet we don't see it and still want to dig and put 'the crap' where we think 'the crap' should be. Amazing totally amazing.
Oh nature has diggers many of them in many forms but they do not have spades and tractors and soil amendments and they all use 'the cr*p nature has diggers many of them in many forms but they do not have spades and tractors and soil amendments and they all use 'the crap' with which nature has covered the soil to build the soil.p' with which nature has covered the soil to build the soil.
Clay soils have a deficit of worms (natures number one pioneer digger, roots are just behind at number two ) and their entourage. Worms need decaying matter to eat and unless we are willing to sit back smoke a pipe and let nature cover the bare earth as quickly as she can we can give her a boost by covering the soil with anything that rots cardboard, leaves, straw, chipped tree cuttings, green manure, weeds. Once covered sow daikon radish (very deep roots that break clay without even trying) lupins (to fix nitrogen without even trying) red clover broad beans the list is almost endless.
The daikon root once rotted provides a conduit through the clay where rains and floods will wash 'the crap' to create 'runs' of organic matter from which the soil life can fan out from all the while the above ground mulching keeps on going and the plant cover and mulch stop the clay from drying out thus speeding up the process. Before you know it clay has become friable soil full of life and fertility fungi bacteria and god knows what else that are a true community.
Just keep clay soil covered and it's inherent fertility locked inside its sticky particles will be freed for use by plants pretty damn quick.

my plot has no topsoil, it is on a hill that is made of old mine spoil, the top soil is several tens of feet below if it is still there. The clay is fubar. Other plots have some topsoil, i presume it was added a long time ago when they made the allotments there. On my plot it looks like this is totally missing, its a few feet lower than next door plot.

Lopsum wrote:my plot has no topsoil, it is on a hill that is made of old mine spoil, the top soil is several tens of feet below if it is still there. The clay is fubar. Other plots have some topsoil, i presume it was added a long time ago when they made the allotments there. On my plot it looks like this is totally missing, its a few feet lower than next door plot.

Really no topsoil just bare subsoil in which no weeds grow?
Would you mind listing any weeds that are growing there or on nearby plots?

no its mine spoil , from a mine , the entire hill . yes stuff grows in it but not well .I never said no weeds grow.

Lopsum wrote:no its mine spoil , from a mine , the entire hill . yes stuff grows in it but not well .I never said no weeds grow.

Ah the art of presumption. So it grows stuff but not well. Presuming again but there must be slope in your plot this means you can trap all the goodness that runs down the slope from the top of the hill and any of the plots that are above yours. The trick is to slow the passage of water through your plot by using swales on contour with the overflow from the top swale going into the next and so on so the water and all the goodies it contains or carries will infiltrate and keep the ground moisture high. It becomes a 'the crap' trap which in and of itself will speed up natures efforts to build soil.
If you then take my advice regarding keeping it mulched and covered then your plots growing capabilities will expand and expand.
Which direction does the plot face and how is it affected by the wind direction?
Forgot to remind you that weed list?

thats kind of whats happened, the beds are like troughs dug 1.5 spades down into the clay,it does stay wet like a swathe, the soil in the troughs is not the same as the clay so it has been added or seriously worked in the past , but in some places it is just clay with little or no work done to it.So ive dug out the worst spot and now that is my compost pit , when the pit is full will dig out more crap and replace with compost further along the bed just to get rid of the worst. The rest will revive with digging in compost generously.
its north south, beds run east west . Southerly winds can be a problem otherwise its well hedged, and on north slope of the hill.

Lopsum wrote:thats kind of whats happened, the beds are like troughs dug 1.5 spades down into the clay,it does stay wet like a swathe, the soil in the troughs is not the same as the clay so it has been added or seriously worked in the past , but in some places it is just clay with little or no work done to it.So ive dug out the worst spot and now that is my compost pit , when the pit is full will dig out more cr*p and replace with compost further along the bed just to get rid of the worst. The rest will revive with digging in compost generously.
its north south, beds run east west . Southerly winds can be a problem otherwise its well hedged, and on north slope of the hill.

Thank you. So the beds are lower than the surrounding ground/paths. On the upside they do run the right way to act as swales, a fancy name for an on contour level ditch or depression which can trap and infiltrate water. In that case all you need to do is help the rain fill these wide swales with 'the cr*p' that has been dug out of them.
What you describe is the result of constantly digging and mixing topsoil with subsoil over many seasons. Both have been so thoroughly mixed the ground level has dropped as all the organic matter has literally floated on top of the clays, the same happens to perlite and vermiculite when dug in, and been washed away down the slope to benefit those down the hill from you. On the upside this situation means it is easy to help nature shove the organic matter back.
Adjust the troughbeds if needed so they wrap around the contour of the slope not run across it in a straight line, assuming this is what they are doing. Create a level spillway in them in the middle or just in from one end so the water can run into the next one down when the top one is full.
With that done pile in the mulch and green manure. The roots from the green manure will hold the mulch in place stopping it from floating away. The level spillway will only allow an overflow to float away the heavier stuff will stay in the troughbed in the slow moving water thus adding considerably to the building of soil.
At the bottom of the slope you can put in a pond which too can overflow to one last swale running on contour before overflowing gently to the neighbours across a wide shallow spillway.
Then it is simply a case of wandering the northern slope plots to see what is growing well, particularly at this time of the year and get chatty with anyone you find, assuming you do not already do this. Chances are a selection of fruits and veg will appear in front of your eyes which you can replicate or adjust for your situation. I would also recommend looking at perennial vegetable varieties instead of totally annual.
It really isn't that bad as it is much much easier to unlock locked in fertility than it is to put it back.
Where I went wrong for decades was following convention which says 'I grow plants' when the reality is nature builds soil. Plants grow themselves when the soil is in good heart.

i think its been over landscaped , the top soil they would have added way back on top of the clay has either been removed or dug down hill exposing the clay entirely on the highest parts, the better soil does seem to be at the bottom end. Like i say the neighbors plot has proper soil to a fair depth ,but my plot is lower and has been dug to lessen the slope forming 3 tiers .
looking at the clay layer its a glacial clay,v sticky with loads of black shaley harder sedimentary layers mixed in. There was an old stone quarry there centurys ago and later the black shale stuff was investigated as a precursor to coal, so the hill the allotments were built on is the spoil from the excavations from looking for coal, they would have added loads of top soil to build the allotments originally.

Iv'e got a couple of these in my garden.

www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Good-Value-130-ltrJumbo-Growbags-Ideal-Vegetable-Salad-Planter-JA/301481956117

I used a bit of old skirting to support the sides a bit more but they stand up well by themselves once there full anyway, and some dowling along the top, theres little chanells you can thread poles into for more support. Not deep enough for root crops but smashing for toms, strawbs, kale and rasberries Ive' got going on in them.

I foraged a lot of wild garlic this year and made pesto and hummus out of it, it was lovely.

Oh darling you are so right. Everyone mentions soil. How remiss of me.

Please note there are two layers in soil. Topsoil where all the 'growing activity' takes place and the sub soil which supports the topsoil. Digging by spade or plow mixes the two to the detriment of both.

Totally incorrect, soils contain many layers and not two layeers and not all growing activity takes place in the topsoil, and where did you get the idea of mixing it from as digging something into clay isn't mixing it with the topsoil.

It always amazes me how otherwise sane people will ignore what is right in front of their eyes as evidence of the way things are, farmers are the most blinkered of all. This is not a sleight on anyone simply an observation so keep the red pen in the drawer.

Nature builds soil from above. Walk anywhere and use the eyes to see how natures piles up 'the crap' essential to life.

Soils build from above and below so once again incorrect, clays break down when they are in the ground.

Makes no difference where the eyes look the evidence of how soil is built is everywhere and yet we don't see it and still want to dig and put 'the crap' where we think 'the crap' should be. Amazing totally amazing.

If you had even a basic understanding of soils and how they are made up, you wouldn't have made such a comment.

Oh nature has diggers many of them in many forms but they do not have spades and tractors and soil amendments and they all use 'the cr*p nature has diggers many of them in many forms but they do not have spades and tractors and soil amendments and they all use 'the crap' with which nature has covered the soil to build the soil.p' with which nature has covered the soil to build the soil.
Clay soils have a deficit of worms (natures number one pioneer digger, roots are just behind at number two ) and their entourage. Worms need decaying matter to eat and unless we are willing to sit back smoke a pipe and let nature cover the bare earth as quickly as she can we can give her a boost by covering the soil with anything that rots cardboard, leaves, straw, chipped tree cuttings, green manure, weeds. Once covered sow daikon radish (very deep roots that break clay without even trying) lupins (to fix nitrogen without even trying) red clover broad beans the list is almost endless.

So now you have contradicted your earlier statement and reitterated what I have said.

The daikon root once rotted provides a conduit through the clay where rains and floods will wash 'the crap' to create 'runs' of organic matter from which the soil life can fan out from all the while the above ground mulching keeps on going and the plant cover and mulch stop the clay from drying out thus speeding up the process. Before you know it clay has become friable soil full of life and fertility fungi bacteria and god knows what else that are a true community.
Just keep clay soil covered and it's inherent fertility locked inside its sticky particles will be freed for use by plants pretty damn quick.