Chalk and Cheese

Life in Sydney seems to revolve around the twin poles of Work and Dojo.  Work provides us with the means to live, travel and buy stuff for our other “Life”, the Farm.

Last weekend saw the back of our Nissan Navarra laden with 25kg bags of chicken poo, mulch, gypsum and other minerals, disappearing up the F3.  The Middle Paddock was screaming out for work.  Well, in all honesty the middle paddock would quite comfortably look after itself, but if we wanted a decent garlic crop next year then we’d have to prepare months in advance. 

We both love garlic but finding succulent, tasty garlic in Australaia is hard.  It’s a seasonal crop and really only available as an overpriced organic product from about November though to about May.  Garlic doesn’t store any longer: it throws up shoots and wants to grow.  Eat it, plant it or lose it.  That’s garlic for you.  And if you want to enjoy garlic outside these months then be prepared to eat cheap bland Chinese stuff or marginally better Mexican or Spanish offerings.   

If I take a few years worth of steps backwards I can put this into context.  On the face of it garlic isn't a complicated crop to grow.  Plant it in about March and it’ll pop its head up a few weeks later and be ready by December.  Growing garlic is easy.  Growing good garlic is labour intensive and a great deal more comlicated.  For the last five years we’ve found this out the hard way and been gradually moving from the laissez-faire extreme (put it in unprepared ground and leave it to take care of itself) towards an almost full-blown management strategy for next year.

• 2006/07 (and still living in the City).  We’d bought enough Australian garlic cloves from a good source to populate a few dozen polystyrene boxes.  Results.  Small, stunted leaves, burned edges and miniscule cloves.  The pleasure of eating our own pungent garlic was countered by the hard work in kitchen preparation.  

• 2007/08.  Moved out of Sydney into semi-retirement (or so we thought).  Planted the offspring of year 1 into the Far Paddock.  Little bit of soil cultivation in a corner of the Far Paddock but no real husbandry.  Results.  Bigger garlic but still not something I’d say was exceptional.  Certainly not something commercially promising yet.


• 2008/09  Sydney work beckoned me back for “three months” (!!!!) so very, very minimal preparation carried out for a March planting.  The whole crop from year 2 was planted into the middle paddock with rock hard ground.  The year was an utter, unmitigated disaster with heaps of smaller cloves than even Year 1.  Boy we were angry with my work.




2009 offering.  The rotary hoe was purchased too late.



• 2009/10   Took some time off work and prepared 2 x 40 metre beds.  Planted in soft soil and, in a fit of madness (in retrospect) decided to groundcover with clover.  Clover was to chosen to help provide natural Nitrogen for the garlic but eventually became so competitive the garlic was strangled.  I’d say we lost over half our crop, what with the competitive clover and torrential rain.  The survivors were only moderate in size. 





Before the clover sprouted....





....and after it took over




• 2010/11.  90% of Year 4 stock was planed in raised beds, dosed with a healthy amount of chicken poo and with no clover!  There’s a month and a bit to go before harvest but all indications show our garlic will be much better than the previous years.  We’ve soil and leaf samples laboratory analysed, know the deficiencies and have tried to counter these before the bulbs are committed.  We’ve also begun the process of preparing beds for next year based on this information.  Year 6 on our journey of experimentation will have about a quarter of an acre of garlic with enough left over to eat and give away to friends.

One day our garlic might even be marketable although that isn’t what’s driving us.  Until then the struggle continues as a demanding juggling act of Chalk and Cheese.   City and Country.