Dug up all my garlic on the weekend and its now drying in the Lemony. As you can see, I’ve carefully separated out each variety so I can continue to collate information about each. I plan on saving the ones with the best qualities to plant next year. That will be this year as all these are autumn planting varieties. Or if they aren’t, I’ve made them so!
However, before I save them, I have to taste each one. So the next stage will be trying each one out with a couple of my basic recipes, such as a simple pasta sauce, to see how they taste and compare. So only the varieties I really like, and which have show good characteristics will actually be planted next year.
The other qualification will be storage ability. As I am allergic to and intensely dislike onion (I guess ’cause it makes me ill…), garlic is my substitute and my aim is to grow enough to keep me in garlic throughout the year, so I don’t have to buy the bland shop-brought varieties. It’s hard to believe that you could buy garlic with so little taste, but multinationals have achieved this with gusto.
Will update you on the taste testing in due course!