Growing Garlic
Apr 15th, 2007 by mark
Growing up in a city, albeit a smaller one, I didn’t learn much about growing food. My mother always had a very African Violets on a stand in the window, and my father has a tomato patch in his yard every year, but I never had the urge to plant things and make them grow.
In college my roommates both had tremendous green thumbs; every flat surface big enough in our dorm room and, later, in our off-campus apartments, was covered with pots and plants. One of my roommates was highly successful in planting seeds or cuttings from other plants to get entire new plants. I managed to ignore and nearly kill an Asparagus Fern.
Recently however I have started trying to grow some garlic in my kitchen. I had a bulb that had been in the hanging wire basket long enough to sprout a green shoot about a half an inch long. We got a pot and some potting soil and planted the bulb and left it to grow. For the first several days I wasn’t sure that anything was happening, but then yesterday I noticed that the shoot appeared to be longer, and it had a definite lean towards the light. I turned the pit 180 degrees and today it is again starting to re-orient itself towards the light. IT’S ALIVE!
For some reason I find this highly satisfying. Of course now I have to figure how how to know when it is “done” and can be harvested.
