........to be safe, these went into a new raised bed, early March, filled with JIC & double sterilised with Armillatox. Good?
So - why do the ones on the left have the ROT??
At least the rest have cloved better than most of our other ones.
A bit stressful!
PS - Most have seed heads - first time I've seen this. Are they worth saving?
Oh Tim, not again! :( :( Small wandering feet hopping between beds, I should think. What a shame! I guess if you make yet another bed, netting with very fine mesh would be an idea. I did a JI bed very recently. The stuff weighs a ton!
On the flowers, depends on the variety. I grow hardneck (seeding) garlic deliberately, and if you catch the scapes when they are still in the swan-neck shape, you can pulverise them and make the most wonderful garlic pesto :) which we put in garlic mushrooms, and used as pasta sauce. Sadly doesn't make more than a couple of beaker's worth and disappears in our house all too fast!!
http://www.reallygarlicky.co.uk/main.html and navigate to the recipes and garlic scape pesto. Yum. (They got white rot last summer on some imported seed. What a pain for a garlic grower! Be interesting to see how they deal with it.)
moonbells
No room for more beds, so we'll just have to think again.
But can you use the 'seeds' as sets?
yes, but they take a couple of years to get up to size. First year of growth is to normal clove size, second to the bulb. Or so I've read!
(I just break them up and freeze the bulbils for instant garlic!)
I guess that they would be good for growing 1st year in smallish terracotta pots or a window box, and then they'd be very adapted to the local conditions, giving a better crop in the following?
moonbells
What a palaver!
Thanks, Jane.
Quote from: moonbells on August 04, 2006, 14:44:16
(I just break them up and freeze the bulbils for instant garlic!)
moonbells
I have a glut of garlic and thought it had a good shelf life ??? if this is not the case how do you freeze garlic? I have blanching in the back of my mind that doesn't ring right somehow :-\
Quote from: Roy Bham UK on August 04, 2006, 22:01:52
Quote from: moonbells on August 04, 2006, 14:44:16
(I just break them up and freeze the bulbils for instant garlic!)
moonbells
I have a glut of garlic and thought it had a good shelf life ??? if this is not the case how do you freeze garlic? I have blanching in the back of my mind that doesn't ring right somehow :-\
The little bulbils on the top of flowering scapes really are tiny - like 2-5mm across at the biggest, and don't have an outer layer like cloves do - and they shrivel quite fast. So you have to freeze them or pickle them or something if you want to save them for using later. I just shove them in a freezer bag...
moonbells
Ah! I see it's not the garlic your freezing it's the seed, so presumably you can't freeze garlic ??? or can you ???
I don't think whole garlic would come out very well, but you can put it through a blender them freeze the result.
I freeze cloves whole each year as a back-up for the plaited stuff. Works fine. But pureéd cloves, as some do, sounds sense for many uses.