Our garden apprentice Lauren Jennings shares her experiences of planting garlic in the Kitchen Garden  

There’s no getting away from it… we are approaching winter. We have been as busy as ever in the Kitchen Garden, working with our lovely volunteers, to plant a range of bulbs, which include 15,000 spring flower bulbs and garlic and onion sets (also bulbs!).   

Flowering in spring, the bulbs include daffodils, Camassias and tulips. I urge everyone to come and visit in March as it will be the most spectacular thing.   

In the veg quadrant of the Kitchen Garden, we have planted two varieties of hardneck garlic and three varieties of softneck garlic. Interestingly, the plant varieties that are not as hardy in February can be planted earlier and often grow larger as a result, which makes sense as they have longer to establish. It is also great to keep some roots in the soil to feed the soil microbiome.  

One of my favourites is elephant garlic, also known as Allium ampeloprasum. It belongs to the onion genus and one clove is sometimes the size of a whole softneck garlic bulb; closely related to leeks, but yields bulbs and is made up of cloves. Elephant garlic originates from Asia where some bulbs can weigh up to 500g. If left for ornamental purposes, it can grow up to 5ft and produce very attractive pink flowers from its flowering head. If you would like to eat the bulb, make sure to cut this flowering stem off, this puts the energy back into the bulb so that it can grow and be flavoursome. 

It’s useful to remember you can save your healthiest cloves of garlic to grow them again the following year. This multiplies your supply of garlic and keeps costs down. 

For our onions we have five different varieties including white, red, yellow and sweet shallots. We plant them 30cm between rows and 15cm between the onion sets. We then cover them with fleece to prevent our lovely bird population picking them out of the ground before they have a chance to root. 

Hopefully, by June next year, these crops will be ready to harvest and will be available to buy from our Kitchen Garden produce cart.