Angelic Garlic vs Evil Onion

I hate onion. I think it is evil and must be destroyed. It makes me sick. Literally. I mean, I eat onion, I’m sick. I’m allergic. Hence, I think onion is evil.

Garlic on the other hand… Garlic is wonderful. An angel of a vegetable. Gives flavour and delight whenever it is used. And of course, it doesn’t make me sick. I love garlic.

The point of all this, is that today I got some garlic planted at the lottie. Thanks to Patrick at Bifircuated Carrots who gave me some wonderful varieties not easy to get in the UK, I have some really interesting garlic to grow for the coming year. Today I planted:

• Susan Delafield
• Estonian Red
• Burgundy
• Vekat Czech
• Purple Glazer
• Georgia Fire
• Rosewood

He also gave me:

• Georgian Crystal
• Persian Star
• Music
• Martin’s Heirloom
• Metechi
• Irkutsk
• Silver Rose
• Gypsy Red

which I hope to get planted in the next week. Ran out of time today, with the days getting shorter and all.

Also got some over-wintering Broad Beans sowed, Aquadulce Claudia and The Sutton. I have planted alternative rows of garlic and broad beans, viz:

I’ve done this in previous years and it seems to work well. The garlic grows down, the broad beans up, so not too crowded but making the maximum use of growing space.

It was a lovely day at the lottie. Mainly blue skies and the sun shining on us, just beginning to set as we finished up for the day. Kevin was helping me, the darling. Given gardening is my obsession, he is very sweet about helping out. Here he is helping with sowing:

Those jeans could do with some sewing too…

I also got the 2nd strawberry bed planted up. I ‘inherited’ the largest strawberry patch ever when we moved into Cornwallis Road, and the strawbs are really lovely and sweet. No idea what variety, but they taste good and are prolific, so I’ve transplanted some to the lottie.

I’m moving the strawberry patch from home to lottie because the current patch at home is in prime kitchen garden space, where I want to grow my salads etc. I may keep some strawbs at home too, because they taste so good and turn into wonderful strawberry ice-cream (yes, I make strawberry ice-cream).