On Monday I planted the garlic ready for next year. The garlic actually did pretty well this year and I decided to try all four sorts again. In retrospect I pulled up the Icelandic purple variety way too early - I noticed that it did not appear in the farm shop until almost a month after I harvested mine so I probably lost some growth there. In the chart below the Purplish white variety is what I grew on as a one year-old last year i.e. last autumn I replanted round, undivided, bulbs. The White variety did best of all and had very large cloves so it is certainly worth growing, and I think the Purplish white one will be as good next year. The Italian one only had very small cloves and I was surprised to find that although the bulb looks white, each clove is a rub red colour. Perhaps it will do better next summer. I planted 9 cloves in each square.
Some of the garlic had scapes and I let them develop. I saved a couple and scattered the bulbils in one square. From what I have read they take a couple of years to grow full-sized but after that they can be very good producers. Could be fun to see how they do.
The shallots did not do great this year so I decided to try them with autumn planting too - if they do not look good in the spring then I can just pull them up. I think I planted one square of each type which I bought in the spring, 5 per square.
I dug up the potatoes from the extra box of molta - they are small but very tasty. I put the molta into the veg boxes and added the usual seaweed and hen manure before planting the garlic.
Bulbils
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Shallots (round)
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Purplish white
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Shallots
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White
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Red Italian
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Icelandic purple
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White
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Purplish white
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