Making a garlic braid.

Our first harvest of garlic (purple wight) has been drying in the conservatory for a couple of weeks so it was time to prepare it for long-term storage. I have never done this before, but I did a bit of research on the web and got a few ideas.

Firstly I prepared the garlic by trimming the roots and tops and cleaning with an old tooth brush. This is to remove any dried soil. I also removed the outer layer around the bulb to obtain a 'clean look'.

I then placed the garlic stems under a damp towel and left them for half an hour. This is to soften the stems to make the braiding process easier.


From here the last thing was to braid the garlic. With having an older sister, I have had plenty of practice braiding - I used a technique similar to putting a french plait into long hair. From here I added a string loop to make a stable system for hanging in the kitchen.

Overall, I am really pleased! This braid has 15 bulbs. We have about another 60 bulbs drying in the shed at plot 4.

It's full steam ahead in the growing season...

The climate of rain followed by sun is suiting many of our crops. The early potatoes planted on plot 4 are now ready. Today we harvested the first few 'charlotte' plants and the remaining 'rocket'. Below you can see some of our charlotte harvest.


The rocket are larger in size.


Earlier in the week I decided to 'bite the bullet' and plant out some of the chilli plants in the raised bed on the patio. The patio has full sun all day and chillies have previously done well in pots here. Time will tell whether we will get a good outdoor chilli crop. The remaining chilli plants will be staying in the conservatory.

The tomato plants, planted in pots on the patio, are doing very well. Shown below is an unsual looking tomato flower. These are a 'brandywine' variety.




Yesterday we also harvested our 'over-wintered' onions. We have about 30 large onions.

Elephant garlic

After a few days of rain it seemed sensible to lift the remaining onions and garlic so they didn't get ruined. We now have a box full of onions to sort out and dry, garlic drying in the shed and elephant garlic.

We only planted 6 elephant garlics, 1 didn't grow, 4 were mushy and stank when dug up... but we got one!

Here it is alongside a normal garlic bulb.

First carrots of the season

Today we picked the first carrots of the season. These miraculous survivers are Early Nantes planted on the 13th March. I say miraculous as this row had been hoed and these re-rooted themselves! These have been growing in a raised bed infront of the sweet pea trellis on the patio. When planting the sweetpeas the row was disturbed so I took the decision to hoe the lot and replant. Before I got around to replanting I noticed some of the seedlings had started to grow again! Probably less than 10% had managed to do this, but I decided to leave them as an experiment. The advice is never to transplant carrots so I am astounded that we actually got a crop. Some of the carrots have forked, but not all. They are finger size and we shall be having them for tea tonight! No carrot fly either, so in all an impressive result.

The sweet peas are in bloom

Over the last few days the first flowers on the sweet peas have opened. These are 2 varieties; 'Sweet King Blue' and some saved seed (unknown). The Sweet King Blue are an amazing colour.

First potatoes lifted

We had a patio barrel with Red Duke of York potatoes in it. They flowered about 3 weeks ago and we decided to lift them.


From just 5 seed potatoes, we got 5lb 4ozs of spuds. Not too bad really.

A HDR view of the plot

Whilst taking pictures tonight, I took 3 photos to try a HDR picture.
HDR (High Dynamic Range) is an image enhancing technique using 3 or more of the same photo taken at different exposures to get all levels of light and dark.

More peas

Tonight we decided to plant yet another row of peas. While Sparkly got on with that, I watered and took some pictures.

One of many rows of peas.
A pea pod, we tried one and it was very sweet, it's no wonder most peas don't make it to the pan when being picked and podded.
Another row of peas with runner beans in the background.
In between the peas we have a block of sweetcorn.

After picking most of the strawberries the other night, this one was looking a little lonely.
The raised beds are doing well, I have labeled the veg in the picture: leeks, sweetcorn, potatoes, carrots, parsnips, beetroot, lettuce, French dwarf beans.

First sets of garlic lifted

Having decided it looked like some of our garlic was ready we lifted the 3 rows of 'Purple Wight'.

After a couple of days drying you can definitely feel cloves.

There is green stuff growing, and its not all weeds

I'll let the pictures do the talking on this one....

Our first peas

Onions starting to swell up nicely

Summer cabbages
Sweetcorn
Aubergines
Potatoes
The shed

our first strawberrya view down the plot from the shed
French dwarf beans
Leeks
Beetroot and Radish
a peep at the parsnips

We have a shed!!

Despite the lack of updates, a lot has happened, most importantly we now have a shed.

Here is the base, with my dad making best use of it before we put the shed up.

... and a shed, needs painting over though, I am not fan of bright orange.