Garlic

Garlic overwinters directly in the bed: after autumn planting (September to October), the cloves stay in the soil and sprout by themselves in spring. A thin layer of straw or leaves protects against freeze-thaw cycles, but it is not essential for survival. Make sure the soil is well drained to prevent waterlogging; in a container, place the pot close to a house wall and wrap it in horticultural fleece to stop it freezing through.

You propagate garlic exclusively vegetatively, because cultivated varieties almost never produce truly viable seeds. The main method: shortly before planting, separate the cloves one by one from a mature, healthy bulb, keeping the papery skin intact as far as possible. Ideally, plant them from late September to November, tip upwards, about 5 to 10 cm deep in loose, well-drained soil, with 30 cm between rows and 15 to 20 cm between plants in the row. Autumn planting gives clearly larger bulbs than spring planting (March/April) because the plants stand longer in spring. The second method uses bulbils (aerial bulbs): hardneck varieties form small bulbils in cylindrical sheaths on the flower stalks in summer. You harvest them from September, when the leaves of the mother plant die back, and store them in a shaded, dry place until the following spring. Then you plant them 1 to 2 cm deep, 15 to 20 cm apart. In the first year they produce small rounds (single-clove bulblets), which you dig up in autumn, store dry and plant again the following autumn like normal cloves. Only then do you get full, well-developed bulbs. The advantage of this two-year method: you can rejuvenate varieties and propagate without the accumulation of viruses that builds up over generations.