They say that it’s a good idea to plant garlic on the winter solstice and harvest it on the summer solstice, and we pretty much did that this year (albeit a few weeks late on the summer end). I remember planting out 365 garlic cloves with Monte way back in June. We planted different varieties, including a Chinese single clove and a local purple variety (which did very well in our soil, mostly).

For our first planting of garlic, we think we’ve done all right. We don’t use a great deal of garlic in our cooking and I’d say we now have a year’s supply, straight from our garden!

The fun part was sitting on the back lawn, with the children playing happily, whilst Monte and I, with the help/hindrance of our puppy, Jac, plaited the garlic. This is something Monte has wanted to achieve for several years – so well done, big guy, on achieving one of your goals!

Monte does some harvesting

We started plaiting. Monte held three cloves together whilst I started the plait, adding a new clove each time I plaited one strand. Like a French braid.

That’s where Jac joined in, as monte kept passing me new cloves and I kept braiding. The aromas coming from the fresh cloves was potent, yet beautiful!

Here the braid is finished and I am tying it off by knotting the garlic stalks/leaves together.

Ok, not the best photo, but I was pretty proud of our garlic plait. Each time we achieve something like this is important and special, and brings us one small step towards our big goal.