I started this week sprouting the first garlic bulbils of the winter. Of the garlic varieties I grow, Aleksandra, Estonian Red and Valdres are all very similar (I suspect they may be the same) have the perfect size and number of bulbils for sprouting. I counted 90 bulbils on one typical head this evening. They are planted on ordinary garden soil (picture) and covered with a few cm of sterile soil so that seeds in the soil don’t quickly appear. The pot is put in a kitchen window to sprout and the shoots can be harvested two or three times before they give up. Some people remove the scapes (flower stems) of hard neck garlic in summer to get a better yield. I have compared the size of garlic on plants with and without removing the scapes and found little or no difference here. I therefore leave the bulbils to develop on most of my plants. For me it maybe adds maybe 50% to the value of the plants, so more than compensates a small yield decrease! The only ones I remove are harvested for the scapes which are delicious in summer stir-fries.
Head of garlic Aleksandra
There were 90 bulbils in one head
Planted on garden soil
Mid-winter emerging delicious garlic sprouts (another year); moved outside for the contrast!
Summer harvest of garlic scapes (Aleksandra) are great in various stir-fry dishes or finely chopped in salad or in garic scape pesto
It took just a week for the first shoots of the garlic bulbils to appear. It’s mostly less than 16C in my living room where I have the pot.
Continuing my series of veggies harvested from the garden. this time used in a baccalao with parsnip (pastinakk), potato (potet), bulb onions .(kepaløk), Jerusalem artichokes (jordskokk), (bought) organic tomatoes and chili. Greens used from the garden: Urtcia dioica (nettles/brennesle) Aegopodium podograria (ground elder/skvallerkål) Hablitzia tamnoides (Caucasian spinach/stjernemelde) Rumex patientia (patience dock/hagesyre) Taraxacum officinale dandichokes (dandelion /løvetann) Ficaria verna (lesser celandine/vårkål) Allium sativum shoots (garlic/hvitløk)
I’ve never seen sprouting bulbils on hardnecked garlic before!
I’ve never seen sprouting bulbils on hardnecked garlic before!
Allium flavum
Allium hookeri var muliense
Allium cyaneum
Allium “Hammer” (Allium cernuum x stellatum?) This plant was found at Hammer Planteskole (nursery) in Stjørdal….I selected this one from Aliium cernuum sales plants as it looked different from the normal flowered plants
Allium “Hammer” (Allium cernuum x stellatum?) This plant was found at Hammer Planteskole (nursery) in Stjørdal….I selected this one from Aliium cernuum sales plants as it looked different from the normal flowered plants
A second Allium wallichii
This broad-leaved selection came from a seednmix of Allium senescens x nutans from Mark McDonough
Norrlands Onion (Norrlandløk) – Allium nutans x angulosum was found in gardens in northern Sweden in the 1970s (one of the 80 in my book)