What varieties of garlic are you going to sow this year

[diggernotdreamer]

Garlic does love good rich soil, and raising the soil level is important as it doesn't like to be waterlogged, my garlic bed has a good application of alpaca poo and well rotted compost. To keep the weeds down, I use wet paper feed sacks or sheets of damp newspaper laid over the top of the soil topped off with either grass mowings, hay or straw. I dib holes about 2-3 inches deep, through the mulch and plant the cloves, cover over and forget about them until spring. I like to give them an application of seaweed liquid to give them a good boost in spring

[Green Aura]

I do like the sound of that. Hoeing between the alliums is a pain in the proverbial.

Do you think I could grow my onions the same way, dnd? We generally grow them together.

[ina]

Thanks - might try that if I get some space in one of my raised beds...

[diggernotdreamer]

I grow everything in the same way, I haven't got long enough to live to do weeding as well. My onions get dibbed through, leek transplants, I tend to grow everything as a transplant and then dib it through the paper and whatever you can get to put on the top. I grow the carrots and parsnips in a similar way except I put a sprinkle of compost (shop bought is good because it is weed free) on top of the paper, then cut slits with a sharp knife and sow the seeds into the slit. Even though my home made compost will have a few weed seeds in it, they don't get much of a hold unlike the ones that are lying in the soil.

[Green Aura]

Looks like I'm going to have to start reading a newspaper again.

[diggernotdreamer]

I read the paper on line and I find the virtual kind doesn't seem to work as well, so my lovely friend whose mother still takes the paper saves them up for me and I get all the animals feed in paper sacks now as I hate those polypropylene ones so they work well

[ina]

Looks like I'm going to have to start reading a newspaper again.

Try freecycle - or even an ad at the local shop... I bet there's folk out there grateful if you take old newspapers off their hands!

[doofaloofa]

My entire crop was destroyed by rust

I'm not going to bother for a few years, see if i can shift it