French Garlic

It's autumn, but due to warm weather it feels like late spring.

Fantastic for the garden, but some plants are confused.

My blueberry bushes are flowering months ahead of schedule!

You need to start thinking about planting garlic.

It was common to plant on the shortest day of the year and harvest on the longest day of the year ie. plant in late June and harvest in December/January.

In Adelaide, it's more suited to plant in late May and harvest in time for Christmas.

Always select healthy looking and large garlic corns to plant. If you plant small corns, then it's likely that you will end up with a crop of small garlic corns.

Don't plant too deep - just lightly cover with soil - dig the soil over first.

Try to keep good looking (and tasting) specimens from last year's crop.

Some notes on what type of garlic you are growing:

If the garlic flowers then it is either a Russian or Argentinian type.

In our climate, the French and pungent types do not flower.

Have a mix. I prefer the French pungent variety.

Back in the 1890s, the Russian type was quite common in SA. They were used to help control aphids. It has less corns that are very large and milder in taste. They are the easiest to grow. You will need to source them from a friend rather than from a retail outlet.

To increase the size of corns, spread complete-D over the planted corns during July to September.