Plant Garlic - It's so Easy to Grow

I love using garlic in cooking and it is really easy to grow your own. Heads of garlic for planting can be obtained from garden centres and mail order catalogues. You can get garlic for free by planting supermarket bulbs but the crop won't be as good. Split the garlic heads into individual cloves and plant these about 2 inches deep and 6 inches apart. Plant a bit deeper in light soils but if your soil if heavy and poorly drained you will need to plant about 1 inch deep on a bed of coarse sand and potting compost. Once planted just leave it to grow, weeding when necessary and watering in dry spells in spring and summer. You can plant the cloves in stages between now and February (depending on soil and weather conditions) which will give a harvest between June and August.
Lift when the leaves start to turn yellow and bend at the stem. Dry outside for about 7-10 days if the weather is fine and dry, otherwise dry in a well ventilated greenhouse. Store in hanging bunches or plaits so that air can circulate the bulbs.
If you don't have room in the garden to grow garlic, grow it in pots as it is shallow rooting and well suited to container growing.

Revamped Front Garden

Just finished smartening up the front garden and I'm very pleased with the result. This area was difficult to keep weed free and never really looked tidy, which is important in the front garden, so I decided to put down some weed suppressant material and cover it with green slate.
This will keep the ground weed free while letting the rainwater soak through.
It was quite hard physical work but I enjoyed it. First I needed to prepare the area by removing all plant material. Also there were bulbs planted in this area which I managed to locate by referring to previous photographs. These have been replanted in pots and borders in the rear garden. The ground was then raked and firmed by treading it flat.
I was lucky enough to get a roll of weed suppressant material in a local DIY sale. There was enough to cover the area with a fair bit left over. The green slate was purchased in 25 kilogram bags and it took 10 bags in total to cover all the material. The roses which were planted in the border along the fence have been pruned back and moved to the rear garden. I've replaced them with five lavender bushes - these were grown from cuttings which I took earlier this year. They should make a lovely fragrant low growing hedge to border my new garden. There are still some herbaceous perennial geraniums and sedum spectabile at the top of the garden near the wall and primulas have been planted in a narrow border along the path. Long stone troughs have been planted with violas and a couple of other pots contain small shrubs and bulbs to add a bit of interest.
I am so glad to have finished this before the winter. It was a job I had planned to do next spring but the weather has been so nice and unseasonably warm that it seemed a shame to waste the opportunity.