196 plump, papery cloves planted, exactly doubling this July’s harvest of 98 bulbs. I am very pleased with the quality of growing stock; these are the grandchildren (3rd planting) of the free bulbs I was given during the March 2020 lockdown. A positive pandemic legacy, large enough to provide both future stock and a year’s worth of eating garlic, I’m figuring.
Garlic does not hybridize; it self-clones an exact copy into each clove…and yet if you replant the best of your harvest each year, it begins to adapt to your garden’s unique growing conditions.
Like some laissez-faire Johnny Appleseed, I plonked cloves willy-nilly into the corners and borders of our garden the first year, keeping little track of which variety was where. So I have only myself to blame that my Siberian and Music varieties are quite likely interplanted and may prove indistinguishable next year when I cure and sort them.
But in my hand are Majestic and Music cloves. They are identical, in both colouring, size, and veining. I’ll have to harvest meticulously if I expect to identify them correctly next year. I’m starting to wonder…does it even matter?
I could simply embrace the blur and blend of my prolific garden and boast that I have produced my own distinct variety: “Ash’s Amethyst”, an homage to geodes and my familial rock hounds, and the striking purple patterns one discovers when cracking open these round bulbs.