Garlic Not Asleep Any More

The young plant.

 In my last garlic post I wrote about planting and how the cloves will "sleep until spring". Well, that isn't true any more!

Probably thanks to very high temperatures (as high as 14 °C), the garlic cloves have woken up and started sprouting. Almost all of them are above the soil now.

While I am extremely excited about the fact that in the middle of the winter something is growing in the garden, I am also slightly worried what might happen to the little planties if frost comes suddenly. Therefore I decided to rake the leaves that are all around now and cover the patch. I'm hoping this will give the young planties at least some protection and that we will still have a plentiful garlic harvest next summer.

Now as we all sit sleepily in the living room and it is dark and rainy outside (a very English Boxing Day afternoon), I think about my cozy garlic planties, covered by a blanket of oak leaves, hoping they are well and thinking of all the good times I am going to have in the garden in 2015. Life is good :)

The covered garlic patch

Merry Crafty Christmas

December Gardening with Queen of the Night

Gardening with a cup of tea - my type of gardening!

I have almost forgotten about these lovely dark tulip bulbs that I had in my gardening box. I have always wanted black tulips (even though I do know they are just dark purple) and they have just started sprouting, so I put them in the ground yesterday afternoon.

Sprouting Queen of the Night tulip bulbs

Queen of the Night are not the only bulbs that are sprouting in the garden. It seems strange, since it is not spring yet, but I guesss this is what the British weather does to plants.

Do you remember my graduation bouquet? I have a feeling it is waking up as well. I put the bulbs into the ground last February and they did not do much, but they are definitely growing now :)

"Mystery" bulb plants sprouting. We will see what they are in spring.

The Garlic Patch

I finally had a nice light afternoon to take a picture of my new garlic area. It looks bare and sleepy right now, but hopefully will be full of life in spring. I can't wait.

My First Attempts at Growing Garlic

Getting back home in the dark hours every single day has really bitten of a huge chunk of my gardening time. Almost all of it, really. However, when I rushed home from my weekend job this Sunday, I managed to get just enough gardening time to plant some garlic. Finally! I've been waiting for this for over a month.

Left: "Casablanca"   ;    Right: "Early Purple Wight"

I planted two bulbs of "Casablanca" into three lovely rows of cloves near the shed where the potatoes used to be (I managed to find one more potato) and one huge bulb of "Early Purple Wight" which also amounted to three rows of big fat deliciously smelling cloves. Now all of them are resing in the ground quietly until their time comes in the spring.

Even in the biting cold, this little bit of gardening brought me a lot of joy. The touch of the soin, the delicious smell of garlic bulbs being broken in my hands and the look of the garden, slowly falling asleep as the winter is creeping over it made me realize how lucky I am to  witness it all.

This is the first year I attempted planting garlic. I am hoping that with some advice from friends and lots of research on the internet, I can be successful.I am already looking forward to spring and summer and autumn, when I get to use the products of my gardening efforts and lookking forward to putting the fresh cloves into all sorts of delicious dishes. Yum yum.