It’s the first of November and it’s time to harvest the early garlic crop. We plant garlic from March through to June and it takes about 6 months for the crop to mature. Over the years, we have tried many different varieties of garlic as they became available to us, but a few have always done better than others for us here with our specific terroir. The large ‘Russian’ garlic does well here, but I don’t particularly like the flavour. I find that it has a somewhat metallic aftertaste, which I find unpleasant. So although it grows well here I don’t plant it. The large white ‘Melbourne market’ variety does well, but is a little bland. The smaller growing red skinned variety, which I was told came from China after the opening-up to the West in the 70’s, does well and although it is only small, it is quite intense in flavour. I like the taste, but it is so fiddley to peel. Last year was not a good year for garlic for us and this variety grew so poorly to be only just worth harvesting. I didn’t bother to even attempt to peel it. I just put it whole into the garlic press and expressed the pulp as best I could and used it straight like this, even mixed with a little of its paper coating. The Italian pink seems to grow quite well and its of medium size and medium flavour. I plant the mall each year and let them fight it out, to see which one does best in each years different climate and rainfall conditions.

We have lifted half of the crop and have about 70 good knobs to hang up to dry from this first plot. There are also another 20 or 30 smaller bulbs that aren’t worth plaiting or hanging. We put them in a small basket on the kitchen bench top for use straight away.