What happens if you miss harvesting some of your garlic

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I used to grow a lot of garlic - it’s quite easy to grow and likes our climate so it was no trouble to grow enough to last us most of the year. But 20 years ago a new pest, allium leaf miner, arrived in the UK and has been spreading steadily ever since. The flies lay eggs on the shoots of onions, leeks, garlic and related plants and the maggots burrow their way down the stems and into the bulbs, making them susceptible to rotting so that they can’t be stored. A few years ago it arrived here and consequently I have had to stop growing onions, leeks and garlic. I harvested all the plants I had and didn’t plant any last year or this year. But I must have missed a few at the edge of the plot. That area got rather overgrown with alpine strawberries and then obscured beneath the leaves of my huge Marina di Chioggia squash plants. But now I have been tidying up, clearing away all the dead stems - and I found out what happens if you fail to harvest a bulb of garlic. This one must have been in the ground for two years and has formed a huge clump! Normally garlic is harvested in summer when the bulbs have matured. Because this is the ‘wrong’ time many of the cloves are starting to sprout, and they do not have the dry papery skins that they develop later. But they do appear to be normal in other ways. So I had to remove the shoots but I didn’t have the hassle of peeling them! There are few signs of insect damage - maybe the plants were too hidden away and just didn’t get noticed? Of course I can’t store these in the usual way so instead I’ve been busy making chutney, pickled garlic and also chopping and freezing some. So a nice surprise bonus that will keep us going for a while! All rights reserved. © Text and image copyright Fleur 2021.