Garlic Growing: A Long-Held Dream

Photo by the author © Yew and Me

There's nothing better than the feeling of being outdoors, growing your own food, and picking what you need, when you need it.

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For a long time it was a dream of mine to grow fruit and vegetables. But I either didn’t have the time, the space or the energy, when all three are ideally needed. And the one thing I wanted to try and grow the most was garlic. I love garlic, and use it a lot when I am cooking. It’s one of the staple ingredients in my kitchen.

Over the last six years I have improved my energy pacing skills, learned to look at activities differently and adapt how I do things. I have also moved in with my Mum, who has a garden and greenhouse. And because my life is slower and less full than it was before I became ill, I have more time. So, for the last three years, I've finally been able to start growing things. Not allotment-style, but various containers on the patio. I am not up to digging vegetable beds.

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Learning to adapt gardening to my energy levels has made it possible to enjoy growing my own food.

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One of the first things I tried growing was garlic, and recently I harvested this year's effort. It’s in the photo above. It's not a lot, but it's enough for Mum and me. The wet winter and fluctuating temperatures in spring affected the yield.

I am not an expert, I am an enthusiastic learner, so with my gardening there is always a lot of trial (or should that be trowel) and error. I have joined a vegetable growing group on Facebook to get tips and ideas from other amateur growers.

Over the last two years I experimented with growing both supermarket garlic and some from the Garlic Farm on the Isle of Wight. The Garlic Farm variety produced larger bulbs, but there wasn’t much difference in flavour. So the garlic I planted last December was just a large variety from the supermarket.

I planted ten cloves in two large plastic tubs and from that I have six good-sized bulbs. I suspect this was due to the exceptionally wet winter, followed by a cold spring, then a heatwave with temperatures exceeding 30°C just a week after the last frost!

For the effort involved, I think it was well worth it. They're surprisingly low effort to grow. Plant them in autumn or late winter, feed them occasionally, and harvest them about six months later. Apart from the occasional watering, nature usually does most of the work for me. And then the smell is divine when you dig them up!

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There's something deeply satisfying about pulling a bulb of garlic from the soil knowing you've grown it from a single clove.

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These are now hanging in the garage for a couple weeks to cure. Then, on a day when I have the energy, I will peel the cloves and blitz them in the food processor with a little oil and freeze them in an ice cube tray. Perfect for low energy cooking on other days.

This year, I have also grown some Mini Munch cucumbers from seed for the first time, and they will go into the two pots that the garlic has vacated.

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I'd love to know, have you found a different way of achieving a dream you once thought you'd lost?

Sometimes we don't give up our dreams.

We just find a different way of reaching them.

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