Saturday, January 5, 2019

2018 Garlic harvested and Processed- Phew

Welcome to our Blog

About our Garden and little plots that we hope to inspire you with  and grow into a market garden.

This year we planted about 320 bulbs of Australian Garlic in April 2018. We watched it grow with anticipation and it gave us great joy to see it doing so well. In early November the scapes started appearing . It was a dry season and we had to keep the water up to the crop.

I cut some of the scapes as part of a little experiment to see the effect on the harvested bulb size and to also sell and educate people what they were . People were interested and one interested person even asked what effect it would have on the bulb. Well the scape is the flower of the garlic bulb and it contains granules that can become seeds and be planted. A garlic bulb can be grown from it , but it would take a long time for it to grow into the bulb size we are used to seeing at the supermarket. You can plant the scape and use the chives that grow in cooking. You can also use the scapes instead of the garlic as they taste the same. If you plant the largest cloves you will get large garlic bulbs.

We harvested the garlic early December at the correct time , before all the rain came . Luckily as it if had rained it would have been ruined. We also were in the middle of processing it when huge storms came over and all of it had to come inside , so the house had garlic smell and boxes everywhere. I am not sorry as it was harvested and it looks like the best crop we have had in the 4 years of growing it.

I had to pickle some of it as some of the bulbs were water damaged and were beginning to rot. I have carefully selected the best garlic for sale so my customers get the best quality.

I plan on entering our best bulbs this to see if we can get another first prize at this years Royal Canberra Show. It makes us so proud.  Anyway who wants to buy some locally grown Australian Garlic that's chemical free.


Harvesting the Garlic
 We ended up with Two wheel Burrow full!


 















 


Garlic has be processed , dried and bundled , it looks great and is firm and fresh
This is some of the Garlic after it has been processed.


Harvesting complete. Its quite labour intensive as we hand harvest it using pitch forks.
 

For Sale. Selling in bundles of $10.50, $7.00 and $4.50 ( not pictured).
 
 
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