People always think it’s a bit odd that I sow my garlic in pots. But there is a method in my madness.
I live in the damp, mild south-west of England where conditions are well nigh perfect for all things fungal.
That gives us some pretty spectacular wild fungi – both common (flat white field mushrooms sprout by the dozen in most fields round here and keep us well fed through autumn) and vanishingly rare. it is no coincidence that many of my Plantlife colleagues who happen to live in the south-west are also experts on waxcaps, quite the prettiest of all the wild fungi in neon pink, orange and yellow and indicator species for ancient, undisturbed grasslands (an increasingly rare habitat).
Unfortunately it also means every raindrop is pregnant with spores of one sort or another just looking for a nice damp surface on which to land and germinate, infecting my crops with blight, mildew, mould and rust.
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