Garlic bulbs

Everyone seems to be taking garlic at the moment.  Rhonda at Down to Earth and Tonya at Joyful Living have both posted recently about planting and growing garlic, one in Australia, the other in Vermont, US.  While N and I were discussing what crops we'd like to grow for next year, we both mentioned garlic.  N loves cooking with it, and although we have grown it successfully in the past, we didn't plant any last year - I can't remember why.  However, with more growing room in the garden, we can go back to it.

The Garlic Farm shop with their restaurant on the left - it looked very popular

We took a drive out to The Garlic Farm, somewhere neither of us have been to before but which surely would offer us a good choice of garlic bulbs as it is the UK's largest specialist garlic farm.  It is out in the middle of nowhere, down narrow twisty country lanes most of which I'd never driven along in all my years of living on the island.  Not the place to meet a tractor coming in the other direction!  We eventually arrived at our destination and walked into a treasure trove of all things garlic.

I loved this wooden carving of garlic bulbs in the grounds

We decided on a selection of four different types of seed garlic, all of which have a good track record of growing in local conditions so we're hoping for a good crop.  There is more to garlic than we realised - I didn't know some are hardneck and others are softneck and will do some reading up on the varieties and growing information.  

Here are the goodies we came back with, clockwise from top left we have Early Purple Wight, Chesnok Wight, Provence Wight, Lautrec Wight and finally a clove of Elephant Garlic which N picked up for a bit of fun.  That one clove is bigger than the other bulbs!  We will plant the garlic in a couple of weeks' time to allow the manure on the raised beds to settle in.