It’s been hot. Temperatures up to and sometimes over 30 degrees c. So after doing the watering not much else gets done. But last Wednesday I had a couple of hours help from a friend and we dug up some of the garlic. The variety is ‘Early Purple Wight’ and has a rather beautiful purple flush on the skin. As the name suggests this is an early variety, the foliage had more or less died down and, anyway, I was impatient to get some into the ‘cooker’.

Since then I have sat in the shade preparing the bulbs and sorting them by size. Many of them are now in jars in the ‘oven’, many are ready to be sold as fresh garlic. But there are still some more to clean, it’s quite a slow job.

I’m a bit daunted by all this because we lifted less than a third of the total of planted garlic. So over the next month or so I expect I shall be fully focused on getting the rest out of the ground. There will be garlic everywhere!