With my less than ideal storage conditions much of my garlic is starting to sprout, a timber shed just isn't the right place for it. I wish I preserved some of it last summer when it was at it's finest but I'll just have to make plans for that when I harvest it this year and not save so much to use "off the bulb".
Having this sprouting garlic has given me an idea though and I've decided to have a little experiment with growing some single cloved garlic, I've read people sometimes call it lazy garlic as there is less to peel!
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| One of my raised beds for my experiments |
The theory being that garlic needs a month of cold weather to separate into lots or cloves inside the bulb. By planting now when the worst of the cold weather is over it should grow nicely but as one large clove, kind of like elephant garlic (but not obviously) but with the stronger flavour of normal garlic.
I divided four bulbs of garlic up and separated it up into large cloves and small ones.
The large cloves I then planted at normal spacings for garlic (about 6-8 inches) and fill the bed up with them. The small ones I planted really close together with the intention of pulling these green and using them almost like chives.
I'm not sure how well this will work, if at all, so please don;t copy me, but I thought it might be an interesting use of some garlic that was well past it's best! I'll report on these later in the year.
Anyone else grown garlic with the intention of growing just a single clove? It'll be interesting to compare it to my other garlic that was put in during the autumn and the elephant garlic as well.
