Here's a picture of my kids taken yesterday with our freshly harvested garlic crop. All of this garlic was grown from a few bulbs bought from the Green Valley Grocer at last year's Colne Valley Local Food Festival. We planted it in the autumn, and lifted it all last weekend (end of August).
I've yet to weigh it, but it certainly compares well with the crop we grew a couple of years ago, and I estimate that this lot will see us through until next summer, saving us at least fifty quid to say nothing of having the pleasure of growing and eating our own garlic.
Last year's Garlic Challenge set out to raise awareness of the fact that depsite the fact that garlic grows well in this part of the world we continue to import large amounts of garlic from as far afield as China (much of the garlic available in the wholesale fruit and veg market does come from China, and not southern Europe as most of us might assume). At this year's Food Festival we will be holding a garlic Weigh-In, where you can bring your crop, or some of it, and get it weighed and logged so we can get some sense of the scale of what we can grow as a community to meet our own needs. Check this website for more details as we get closer to the festival weigh-in on September 18th. Send us your garlic photos and stories and we'll put the best up on the website.
There will also be a chance to pre-order seed garlic for next year. By aggregating our orders into one big one we'll get a better price. I'll be using some of my best bulbs from this year's crop, and I'll be ordering some seed garlic as well to see how the two compare.
