- Garlic is a lovely vegetable to grow because it's actually not too difficult, and it stores very well. So from one summer harvest, you can have food or garlic next year to eat for a long time. In fact I've got a bulb here that I harvested exactly a year ago, and it's been hanging in the
conservatory of my house there, which is a very good place to store garlic 'cause it just wants to be dry basically, indoor atmosphere is nice. And oh, this is nice, except I'm feeling just
one little soft bit. That's not bad for a year old. So one year earlier, that
one was looking like this. In fact, there's two
different, not exactly types, but different harvests here. There's an outdoor and an indoor. And I grew... I found that growing
garlic outdoors in the UK at the moment, for whatever
reason, I don't know, actually, it's getting a lot of rust. And rust, you can still see a bit. We've taken off most of it, you see here. On these leaves, it makes the leaves go yellow prematurely. You actually first see
little orange spots. And then they develop and basically stop the
leaf photosynthesizing. So, this is outdoor garlic, which was harvested six days ago on the 18th of June, which in our climate and latitude is a little bit early. Normally I reckon about today, actually, 24th, 26th of June, when all being well, the leaves would still be green. This is a very important
part of our garlic harvest. Some people say they should yellow. That's not true. Don't believe that one. You should still be seeing, roughly half the leaves at least green. But what you're looking
for, and you can check this, just sort of burrow down into
the ground with your hand, or use a trowel, whatever. And feel around the bulb, and you should be feeling protrusions where the cloves are forming. And these are a little bit
immature because of the rust. I mean there's a not any bigger, but slightly more mature one. And you can see the clove
starting to prick up. If I just peel off the outer skin a bit, you can probably see more clearly. The outer skin was white
at the time of harvest, and interestingly, it's now gone purple. Do you see the nice clove there? So this garlic is 90% mature, I would say, and it's fine to store. It will keep really well. It's still maturing. And we leave as much of
the top on as it's healthy, while it's maturing, that will help it to finish off ripening. And you can the difference between, so this is the outdoor
garlic, planted, sown, as in sown cloves at
the same time as this. So that's pretty much average difference between growing under cover, where not only, it's a bit
warmer in the growing time, which is between October and June. But also, I find at
the moment, undercover. That means greenhouse or polytunnel. It doesn't get rust. And so it stays green to the end. And it still quite green
leaves at harvest time. And because it's been
photosynthesizing fully, we get lovely big bulbs. I'm really, I'm so happy with those. And this is softneck. So it's important to
understand the difference. Softneck, you can do that. Hardneck, you can't. We'll look at that in a minute. And it's the two main
types, softneck, hardneck. This one, harvest earlier. That's probably the main
point of difference. Sow them at the same time, look after them in the
same way, same spacing. But the harvest of softnecks, two to three weeks earlier, which is why the hard necks
are still in the ground, and the hard necks tend to have, they tend to be slightly
smaller, and with fewer cloves. But they're bigger therefore. So, depends what you want. They're easiest to peel, actually, that's quite an attribute. And I'm gonna take this one, and do a pretend plant with it over there, where we're gonna have a
look at hardneck garlic. Here by contrast, is the hardneck garlic. And you can see the difference there by these stems that come out, which is potentially a flaring stem. It has the little pagoda on the top, where the flower would
form if it was allowed to. These are two of three
that we missed actually, that you harvest these normally, as they're called scapes,
which you can eat. And that would be sometime
late May, early June, in our situation here. Because that then encourages
the garlic bulb to form, all being well. So you can see also here. I should show this before
I take it out, the rust. That would be a green leaf, still, if it wasn't for this rust, which is those orange spots. You see them first on the
underside of the leaf. And I'm sorry I can't offer
you any remedy for it. It's very similar to leek rust, but actually quite a lot worse, and growing worse as well, sadly. Nonetheless, I think we're gonna find, by the thickness of the stem, a decent size bulb. And although I could leave
this a bit longer here, because it hasn't got any leaves anymore. It's just as well to harvest it. And also with garlic, if you
leave in the ground too long, it starts to rot a bit on the outside, and you can lose the
outer skin of the bulb, and then the cloves all are exposed. And sure enough, you can see
this is quite a bit smaller than the softnecks we
were looking at there. Also, smaller than I should be, because of the rust. So if I just cut the, I find it good to cut the
roots off at this stage, just 'cause they cut
more easily when damp. And then I'm gonna peel
off the outer skin. Again, good to do at harvest
time, because then... Well it's just a lot easier. And you've got this beautiful white bulb, where I am seeing some
clove differentiation. So although the rest has
caused quite a bit of damage, all is not lost. There's still quite a bit
of worthwhile garlic there, which we'll leave to dry. You can leave it to dry in the sun, but when it's really hot
like this at the moment and very strong sun, that's what makes the
bulbs go a bit purple. And too much of that can
cause some deterioration in the flesh of the garlic. So we actually leave them in the sun for a couple of days, maybe, and then put them under
cover with some air around to finish drying for about four weeks, until the tops are really quite dry, and then that's when we
hang them up under cover. And then planting, you can see the spacing here. It's around 10 centimeters, four inches. The rows are 30 to 35
centimeters, 12, 14 inches apart. It's pretty close. So we had softneck there, had quite a lot of garlic
from this fairly small area. And the way we plant this, very simple, just dib a hole. I use a dibber, because that's so easy to make a hole in the
soft surface compost. No dig. And then you take, I always recommend to take the best bulbs from the year before. Do bear with me here, 'cause we're June, this
is a fake planting. It's not a real planting. This is what you want to in October. So if I wanted to grow
this hardneck garlic, I'd let it dry and then
take the bulb apart into cloves in October. It's not written it stone
it has to be October. That's an average. From mid-September to
Christmas is possible. Earlier in that period,
you tend to get more yield. So select the biggest cloves, and you put in the same way up that they were growing already, so that's the bottom
end and the rooting end, into the ground. Cover over. And that's garlic planted,
should it be October. And in fact, what we do
is put them not too deep, maybe that much ground above them. And then the annual surface dressing of compost on the bed. In October, it just works really well. So that was this bed was
composted last October. It's received one or two
other bits involved it in, just 'cause we wanted to lose a bit. But basically, that's the
essence of it, the simplicity, and I find with not
weeding, it's not an issue, because they don't actually grow much. And just to finish this off, I think it'll be fun to look at a variation of garlic,
which is elephant garlic. The last we're looking at
here is a slightly crazy one. It's called elephant garlic, which I feel is the wrong name, actually. It's because the flavor
is very, very mild. And I think of it now as bulb leek. You can see how the plants
look quite leek-like, and look our sulfur rust. Not the same rust anyway to see on garlic. And the unusual thing, so I'm rather leaping ahead of myself. Not often I use a spade on these videos. But like I've had to
rummage around this clump, and it's so strongly rooted. I think the simplest method to remove it, would be just to cut underneath
a bit with this spade. It's very sharp, copper spade. And the reason, there's
lot of stems coming out of this clump. You would normally have say, one, 'cause you plant one
elephant garlic clove, and you get one bulb. But, I'll be perfectly honest with you. I forgot to harvest this last autumn, or last summer rather. And so there was a lot of
elephant garlic cloves in here, making lots of bulbs. And I'm pretty curious to see, actually, what has happened in the way of harvest. We're gonna see quite a
range of shapes and sizes, and it's looking like quite a lot of them are gonna be quite big. Perhaps if I just stop
levering at the point, but as this one's coming out already. That's another curiosity
about elephant garlic, and I'm sure some of you
will know better than me, the little bulbils that
form on the outside of it. But whatever, you can see
what a wonderful specimen of garlic it is. So that's just one of
the few growing here. There's another one. Here's probably the biggest one. Actually, they're very shallow. So doing that little bit
of levering with the spade has worked to release them all. All right, look at this. Wow. You can see they're growing in a corner, very near to this clump of asparagus. And also something called Good-king-Henry or Lincolnshire spinach. So they haven't had it all their own way, but they're doing all right. There's one slightly, yeah. If you pull too hard and
don't lever a little bit, or cut underneath then, you can lose the stem,
and they won't keep. They'd still be good to
eat if they break off, but not to store. These will keep pretty well
for a decent length of time, like until next spring or even longer. Same story if you keep them dry, there are every so many bulbils here, and a little bit through
to see what happens. Both of them growing on... I'm just going to nip around this actually for this last one, because I don't want to cut into the asparagus roots too much. Aw then, look at this. This is magnificent. So if you expect that to taste of garlic, you will be disappointed. It is more leek. And it has not many of really big cloves. And you can see also how, I'm have see at a time, when still quite a bit of green leaf. But look how mature it is. It would have stood for
another couple of weeks. So there's quite a long, harvest window from now until the middle
of July, in this case. And I'll treat them after this, the same. And they have same
properties of all garlic, which is that once you've got the harvest, you've also got your seed. That's something I really like about it. The softneck that I was harvesting, I last bought the main
lot seed, 16 years ago. So I've just keep going, replanting bulbs from that same stock. So it's very economical. Crops are grown not too difficult. I do recommend the no-dig approach, 'cause weeding can be an issue otherwise. They don't offer much weed competition with garlic, itself. And you should find it
actually pretty simple. (light gentle music)
