Fruity Things

I have just sorted out our strawberry plants. In the Autumn we potted up runners from our main plants and put them in the greenhouse for over wintering. Now the weather is warming up we've moved them to our recently bought cold frame. We did lose a few plants but we have twenty looking good, which will more than double the number we already have.

And our rhubarb is coming along very nicely. This is it's second year and it will be the first year that we will be able to harvest it. The variety is Stockbridge Arrow. We're growing it in a small triangle of earth between the greenhouse and the garden path. Possibly a little too close together, but we'll see how well it does and we always have the option of splitting it and finding another location for half of it.

Planting Garlic Bulbils

Last year our garlic was not as successful as we would have liked. The bulbs were small and some were eaten by mice just after planting (our cats clearly don't like garlic flavoured mice). It was not all bad as we did get some to cook with, but most were small bulbs and rather fiddly to peel, although they did taste good. Some also went to seed rather early. Not sure why, could have been the dry weather we had last year. Our onions seemed to fare a little better but also suffered from going to seed early.

On the up side the flower heads produced lots of little garlic bulbils

Bulbils are not seeds. They are clones of the original plant and in this way are like the cloves.

This year I'm trying to grow these bulbils into garlic plants. I understand from my research (Google) that it will probably take a few years to be big enough to harvest, but I can wait.

Today I've planted them quite close together in a old herb planter. This planter took about one head worth of bulbils. I'm using John Innes No. 1 compost.

I'm not sure how important it is to get the bulbils in the right way up. When you pull them gently of the clump easy to see the right way up.  The top of some of the bulbils were sprouting and this end was more bulbils, the other more pointed. So I've tried to plant mine narrow, pointy end down.

After planting I sieved a little more compost over the top and then watered well. I've positioned this tray on the window ledge of the utility room. It gets morning sunshine and I can keep an eye on them. The rest of the heads I managed to squeeze into a spare seed tray. I'm leaving these in the greenhouse, and we'll see which one does better.