Get garlic in the ground

Tradition has it that garlic is planted on the shortest day of the year and harvested on the longest. The winter solstice was on Sunday but don’t fret – garlic can actually be planted any time from May until the end of July with no ill effects. The key things to know are:

• Your crop will only be as good as the seed you start with. Buy locally grown bulbs (with evidence of roots) and split them up, keeping only the fat, outer cloves to plant. Eat the rest. • Soil preparation matters. Garlic is a root crop and a hungry feeder. Dig in well-rotted manure, or store-bought sheep pellets, and general fertiliser.

Prepare the soil to a depth of 20cm.

• Space the cloves out at least 20cm apart, as the more space they have, the bigger the bulbs will be. Healthy garlic plants can grow as fat as leeks.

• Don’t bury the cloves too deep.

Press into the soil, with the pointy end facing up, and cover with 2-3cm of soil. You can always add more compost and mulch later in the season if the bulbs end up too shallow.

DO YOU LOVE OR LOATH BROAD BEANS?

Even if you can’t abide them on your plate, there are good reasons to grow broad beans. They’re excellent nitrogen fixers and a useful green manure crop over winter. Sow thickly in empty beds.

HOW TO SOW: Broad beans can be sown direct in winter, as the seeds germinate even in frosty soil. The seeds are large and easy to sow.

Space seeds 20cm apart in blocks, rather than long rows, as this makes it easier to support all the plants.

The easiest staking method is to use corner stakes tied together with one or two lines of string. Broad bean seeds take 14–21 days to germinate in winter (7–10 days in late spring).

Sown now, plants will establish slowly, but they’ll be a good size come spring, when the first flowers will form. In the meantime, you can nip the tops out of the plants to keep them bushy. Lightly steam these as a bonus crop of greens.

VARIETY GUIDE: ‘Robin Hood‘ (Kings Seeds): This very dwarf variety is very cold hardy and suited for small gardens and large pots.

‘Coles Prolific’ (McGregor’s): Another useful dwarf variety (up to 1.3m).

‘Exhibition Long Pod’ (Yates and McGregor’s): This classic variety, as its name suggests, has very long pods – up to 30cm, or more.

‘Evergreen’ (Yates): Smaller pods of mild, tender beans. ‘Imperial Green’ (McGregor’s): These beans stay vibrant green when cooked so look pretty when served.

‘Superaguadulce’ (Kings Seeds): A sassy Spanish variety, with fat pods packed with meaty seeds. ’Hughey’ (Egmonts) has scarlet flowers and green beans that stay green when cooked.

RAISE NATIVE TREES & SHRUBS FROM SEED

Native seeds don’t need cosseting inside a glasshouse. In fact, many of them, like the cabbage tree seedlings above, prefer to rough it outdoors.

Put trays of seed-raising mix in partial shade outdoors for some protection from being dried out by the sun. Seeds need to be moist and will turn up their shoots and roots if conditions become too dry.

Sprinkle pea gravel over the seeds once they’re sown and pressed into place. This keeps weeds away and the moisture in, resulting in a higher strike rate and a successful start to the life of your native plants.

Robert Guyton suggests including a small sample of the soil that came from beneath the trees the seeds were gathered from, so the seedlings can be united with the beneficial fungi that helped the parent tree get to where it is now.

PROPAGATE SHRUBS BY LAYERING

Pegging a flexible branch of a favourite plant to the soil will result in a new plant by late spring and is the most successful method of reproducing certain tricky plants like camellia and daphne (above).

Some obliging plants like creeping rosemary and thyme layer themselves anywhere a low lying stem touches the soil.

It’s as simple as scouting about for a long stem close enough and flexible enough to pin down into the soil near the base of the parent shrub. Scratch away a section of bark on the stem where it touches the ground. Keep the stem in contact with the ground with a wire staple or a stone. Alternatively, attach the stem across the top of a container of potting mix.

Roots will grow from the stem. Cut the stem away from the parent plant when the roots are well established.