and Happy New Year too.
There's something symbolic about planting something on New Year's Day, especially if it's garlic which needs a cold period to perform properly (today's test - give me the proper name for that cold period. Marks out of 10 for prompt response and bonus points for spelling it correctly).
I planted 70 cloves of various garlics from The Garlic Farm on the Isle of Wight http://www.thegarlicfarm.co.uk/ and 4 cloves of elephant garlic. Last year's garlic was very poor so I'm looking forward to a better crop from better stock - some of the cloves are huge.
Then came home and had a heart-starter (double espresso & a shot of Calvados). Yummy.
This morning we went to see The Golden Compass, with lots of armoured bears on Svalbard. I was going to make a cheap crack about "Not much gardening on Svalbard", but have a look at this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault
Impressive.
Best wishes for a good year
"low temperature need" to counter dormancy that sets in when garlic has spent time at temperatures between 20 and 25*C. then when the temperatures rise/days lengthen again, the garlic starts growing more quickly than if it hadn't spent the time at the lower temperature.
ReplyDeleteNo, i'm not that good - i just got curious about your question so i went to look it up :)
gotta love the 'net.
keth
xx
Yep, that's about it, and it needs the cold in order to 'bulb up'
ReplyDeleteI bought one of those garlic packs from the Garlic Farm (in person, it's just down the road) and opened it to have a read. I got called away to the phone and when I got back the dogs had turfed the whole lot out. The garlic bulbs were decimated, and out of the identifying paper bags....so I didn't know which variety was which....! I planted what was left and had a good crop of anonymous garlic.
ReplyDeleteMoral....beware of dogs when opening garlic grow packs!