How to plait garlic
There’s something so comforting about building up a well-stocked store room full of home-grown food to take you into winter. I think it taps in to some kind of primaeval urge to hedge against the apocalypse (this is feeling increasingly less far-fetched these days). In any case, it does mean you can continue to eat home-grown and low-carbon well beyond the veg growing season, and that can only be a good thing.
First in the stash are always the onions, which finish their growing year on the longest day then gradually subside into summer dormancy. Once the leaves have died back you can dig them up and dry them for a couple of weeks in the greenhouse: once fully dry, weave them into strings and simply hang them on a convenient hook until you need them.
Onion stems are quite short and brittle once dried, so you have to weave these in to a loop of string to keep them in place. Garlic, though, is far easier: it holds on to its long, flexible foliage so you can simply plait it all together in one long braid.
You will need a softneck variety of garlic, as these keep better than hardneck and have pliable stems (hardneck garlics develop a stiff central flower spike which you can’t plait with). After that, it’s a pretty straightforward process: no harder than plaiting the pigtails of your daughters before they set off for school (and possibly easier, since garlic doesn’t wriggle while you plait).
So here’s a little video to show you how - with Oakley doing his best to join in!
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