Wilderness

One of my pre-exam blitzs last night, it was so depressing to see the amount of weeds, slugs of all sizes, fading crops and very little to replace them - as you know I have not been sowing a lot lately and most of what I did sow was exterminated by draughts, slugs and earwigs.

But the courgettes are growing and so are cucumbers, tomatoes and sweet corns. Tomatoes I actually found in a better state than last time I saw them, and I got 6 plants of pumpkin that I managed to transplant.

And - there was another surprise, how amazing I always find the vegetable world... Garlic picking was long overdue, so I braced myself and stated digging wherever I saw a stump. Being tired and in a hurry I hadn't even changed so I was wearing cream trousers and shoes and was not in a position to do serious digging. I am sure I left something and hope I manage some time this weekend to check.

Anyway, I was digging underneath the wilted, rotting stumps, pulling them at the same time, when I saw something unexpected: looked like a bluebells seedhead but very close to the ground. Curious but not very patient I digged it out to check. It was just another garlic!

Above the head, squeezed out of it and just over the soil surface, a short plant made of little garlic cloves had developed. Last year most of the garlic plants had flowered, so I thought that seeds was the way garlic reproduced, but obviously not only that: if you leave your garlic too long it won't just go on growing underground: apparently it grows out of the soil again.

Writing about it it seems even more strange, maybe I dreamt about it, but I found other little cloves lying around... Will try to take a picture of the curious specimen which I re-planted.



P.S. far from perfect, as I just had my mobile with me, but there you go...

-- Post From My iPhone