Seeding, Weeding and Plucking
Ok, so I couldn’t find a word to rhyme with seed and weed, and is yet able to relate to our experience plucking out garlic for harvesting. Holler me if anyone can :p
We did our first seeding inside a greenhouse at our wwoof farm using a spade and a spoon. As per our instructions, it seems to be a very delicate and precise process slowly nudging a selected number of seeds into each slot.
The master and the pupils, carefully now..
Weeding the sides in the greenhouse
Quiver under the blade, you weeds!
It was quite a satisfying experience getting that pluck-out feeling from pulling the garlic bulbs out of the soil. After that, we cut the roots and most of the top part, and left it out in the greenhouse to dry.
Alittle bit about growing garlic from what we read online. Beside being so important in making many dishes taste better, whether it is using them in soups to give alittle kick or frying them into crispy bits, garlic is known to have anti-bacterial and anti-viral effects to build a strong immunity in the body. Best of all, it is so simple to grow them and grow so many in one harvest! With proper storage, your harvested garlic can be a handy cooking buddy for 4 – 6 months.
You can easily grow garlic from the cloves you buy for your cooking. Choose those with the larger cloves. Other than growing them in a sunny and well-drained spot, we noted that watering should be reduced gradually as the season warms up as garlic needs a hot, dry summer to allow the bulbs to mature.
We harvested our garlic when the leaves turn yellowish and brownish. As another summer harvest vegetable, our garlic was grown in the same plot with the onions. We also read that onions and garlic are also good companion plants to cabbages, so grow them altogether!
Garlic freshly plucked out from the ground. Oh, that wonderful fragrance permeating the air
Off with the head! Garlic!
Sun-tanning, drying i mean, the army of garlic
Lastly, after they are dried, we put them a same number of them into sacks to wait for future use. One immediate use if you are not cooking is to hang them around to dispel cockroaches which hate strong smell.