Allotment Gardening Advice Help Chat
Growing => Grow Your Own => Topic started by: dapper on June 27, 2009, 18:37
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Hi people,
I am making progress with some vegetables, Patatoes, Sweetcorn, Runner Beans.
However I seem to have lost my Garlic, I had specifically Elephant Garlic. I planted around November I think. It might have been a little later. I remember reading the instructions on when to plant so I know I followed the instruction on when to plant. (I should have made a note of when I planted)
Anyways it eventually started to get a flower forming. I must be honest I was not sure if I was meant to cut it off or not. Anyways I had a look at the them as I was curious. Well I managed to get the cloves... so some success. But it was kind of woody! Thats the best I can discribe.
Anyways I have now recently purchased a Polytunnel and wondered if its too late to try and grow some in the poly tunnel.
Your feed back much appreciated.
Dave
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Sorry to hear about your garlic problems :(
Definitely the wrong time of year to be putting normal garlic in. The autumn sown garlic will be going into the ground in only a few months and it's too late for spring-sown I'm fairly sure.
I don't know enough about Elephant garlic to say whether it's the same for that, I'm sure someone else will be along at some point though
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I am puzzled about your description of "woody" for your elephant garlic. It is quite different from ordinary garlic and used in a different way. After taking off the outer hard skin from the cloves, (roll it on a hard surface and it breaks up), you can slice the clove up for cooking or leave the cloves whole for roasting or add whole to stews, soups etc.
I have never sown it now, but last year I left a head of elephant garlic in the ground and it started to grow again in the autumn but did not complete the growing cycle untill this year.
Yours should look like the photos on my web site.
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I`m puzzled to as I grow it each year and mine is a good month off being ready.I leave the flower heads on these unlike garlic and you get little bubils which you can eat or plant,they take 2 years to mature.You get a central woody stem in the middle of the bulb but I have never known the cloves woody.
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I lifted my elephant garlic and it is now drying in the greenhouse. Last year too much wet resulted in some rot and loss.
Plant elephant garlic around October.
Feed in spring.
I always remove the flower as soon as the flower stem appears - it can reduce bulb size.
Small bulblets form around the main bulb in the ground - these can be grown on but only in 2nd & future years will produce multi-corms.
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Thanks for the replies.
Realfood, I looked on your site, Very good site by the way. Nope mine were extremely small. the cloves very small! Nothing like whats in your picture. I only planted a few so not a great loss.
I will have a better go next time.
Dave