Seems that being a little more traditional about my garlic planting may have reaped benefits. I planted the cloves soon after the shortest day as tradition prescribes and within only a few short weeks progress was good but I still didn’t want to get my hopes up.  It was with some trepidation that I dug the bulbs up yesterday to find enough large and juicy garlic that we could eat garlic every day for the next year.  We like garlic but I’m not sure even I could manage a daily dose.

You can buy New Zealand grown garlic freely here but it’s rather expensive compared to it’s cheaper counterpart imported from china which is sprayed with all sorts of chemicals I dare not think about. My home grown culinary bounty is now carefully sun bathing and after a few weeks drying we’ll prepare them for storage and begin the delightful challenge of eating our way through our garlic stocks.

It was quite a feat digging out the garlic bulbs on account of their long root system.  The smell of fresh garlic was delicious although I’m not sure that the hounds really appreciated them after a couple of sniffs they went off to find something else to explore.  Sometimes they just don’t know when they are onto a good thing.