March is the perfect month for planting garlic.
The bulbs soon establish in warm soil and you can plan for a magnificent harvest next spring.
A garlic bulb or ‘head’ is made up of individual cloves that you separate and plant for a new crop.
If you can grow onions you can grow garlic, their cultivation needs being more or less identical.
Garlic belongs to the vast onion (Allium) family that includes leeks, shallots, chives as well as onions.
All onions like cool weather and plenty of moisture in early growth, followed by heat as they ripen.
They grow best in full sun.
Garlic originates from Central Asia but has naturalized all over the Northern Hemisphere and has been cultivated for centuries for medicinal and culinary uses.
If you’ve never eaten fresh garlic from the garden the taste will come as a nice surprise, totally lacking the sulphurous pungency of bulbs that have sat too long on a supermarket shelf.
When cooked, garlic enhances other flavours without adding astringency, and even a raw clove crushed in salad dressing is aromatic but not unpleasantly sharp.
Although garlic is easy to grow, it benefits from good soil preparation.
It likes loamy soil with good drainage so dig in plenty of rotted manure before planting.
You’ll need to check your soil’s acidity level or pH.
Onions won’t thrive in acid soil so you may need to add lime or dolomite at a rate of up to 400 grams per square metre.
Throw it around and rake into the surface, rain or the sprinkler will take care of the rest.
If you’re gardening on heavy clay, heaping the soil up into a low ridge and planting the garlic on top helps drainage.
Plant cloves about 10 to 15 centimetres apart with the top – the pointy end - just below the surface. Water well from the word go, this is vital.
Garlic planted now will be ready to harvest in six or seven months’ time, when the stem and leaves dry out and flop over.
There are dozens of varieties on offer - farmers markets are often a good source of bulbs.
Large ‘California White’ and ‘Aussie Purple’ are easy and keep well.
Little white ‘Besancon’ has a delicate flavour.
For a difference, try a ‘hard neck’ variety.
‘Red Akropolis’ cloves are purple when harvested, fading to brown as they age.
Fiona will join other guest speakers ABC Gardening Australia’s Costa Georgiardis and wild food forager Diego Bonetto at the Country Women’s Association Kandos Gardens Fair on the weekend of April 2 and 3. The event will shopwcase open gardens in and around Kandos and Rylstone.