Gardening made up as we go along

Posts tagged ‘solent wight’

Winter planting

Today, we cut down the remaining wizened bean plants, having made sure we had saved all the potentially viable beans for sowing next spring. With the beans and their canes missing, the garden has lost all its height, and looks very empty all of a sudden. Very bare, compared to June or July.

However, the cycle goes around. In the post, the other day, a garlic bulb arrived.

Solent Wight garlic bulb

Carefully peeling off the papery skin revealed a tight-packed spiral of fat cloves.

Solent Wight garlic bulb

This is a softneck variety, Solent Wight, chosen because it’s meant to be a particularly easy variety to grow in southern England, as you might expect from the name. The cloves were planted up in a couple of our largest containers, moved to the sunniest side of the garden along the wall of the house; in spring a thin sprinkling of annual flower seeds might go in between the garlic stems if there looks to be enough space for them. In 8 or 9 months, if all goes well, this bulb will have turned into ten or more ready for drying and eating.

bean, garlic, green bean, planting, runner bean, solent wight, sowing

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