I had very little faith in my garlic this year. I over-eagerly pulled one bulb up a few weeks ago and was very disappointed to find it hadn’t split into separate cloves. I convinced myself this was due to our mild winter rather than my being too keen. And then (as mentioned in my previous post) it got rust, really bad rust, worse than I’ve ever seen it, and my pessimism on a good garlic harvest went as rife as the rust.

So with low expectations we pulled the whole bed up on Sunday, and what d’you know – it’s fine!

There are a few small bulbs, as usual, but on the whole the majority look like those pictured above (once stripped of their tatty outer clothes) and I couldn’t be more chuffed.

I’ve hung up the majority of it to dry in the allotment shed (plastic trellis strung between hooks), which will smell lovely next time I visit. But these beauties came home with me and the first one was chopped whole. Some went onto spicy potatoes wedges and a lot of it went into a very chunky aioli (made with mayonnaise, olive oil, lemon juice, chopped parsley and the garlic) for dunking the wedges into. When it’s green like this you can slice the whole head like an onion and use the stem too, it’s a little milder but still delicious.

Updates on the rest of the plot to come soon.