Just a few sprigs of coriander, arugula leaves or garlic feathers, added to a vinaigrette, Olivier salad, sliced vegetables, sea cabbage or sauerkraut salad, will give the cold appetizers familiar to household members an amazing aroma and delicate taste.
How I grew twenty-centimeter garlic feathers in 30 days
Personally, garlic grows best on my windowsill. At first, I purchased hatched or sprouted heads of a spicy crop in a store or market, sorted the bulbs into separate fractions, put the cloves in water, and after a few weeks cut off the greens.
Using the same method, onions are usually harvested by placing the heads in plastic cups, glass jars or polyester containers.But this year, a neighbor at the dacha advised me to plant garlic in the ground, making drainage from eggshells at the bottom of the planting container, promising that the result would exceed all my expectations.
Planting container, soil mixture and seed fund
For the event, I picked up a plastic tray of medium depth (4 cm) for portioned pieces of chicken, which, if necessary, is convenient to carry from place to place and turn different sides to the sun.
I lined the bottom of the improvised mini garden bed with chicken egg shells crushed in my palms (0.5 cm layer).
On top of the drainage, I poured universal soil for indoor flowers (acidity ranging from 5.5 to 6.5 pH). The layer of soil was about 2.5 cm. Before planting the cloves, I did not water the slightly damp substrate taken out of the bag.
As planting material, I bought ordinary Chinese garlic from the nearest supermarket, which had not sprouted or even hatched. It turned out to be a spring variety with segments located inside the bulbs in two circles. As the experience of previous plantings shows, if you manage to find heads of local garlic (spring or winter) with greens that have already appeared, then it will take 7-10 days less to get a harvest.
Carefully removing the root end (it had clearly been trimmed and processed to increase the shelf life of the vegetable), I disassembled each garlic bulb into separate fractions. I set aside the largest cloves of garlic for cooking. I planted all the other teeth, even the smallest and thinnest ones.
Sowing and plant care
When planting in almost dry soil, I tried to place the planting material as closely as possible to each other.
After sowing, I abundantly moistened the soil with a solution of liquid vermicompost (3 caps of fertilizer per 1 liter of water).In the future, I watered the garlic every day, not sparing the settled water.
According to reviews from experienced vegetable growers, sprouted garlic can easily withstand short-term drops in temperature to sub-zero levels. Until the first shoots appeared (about 5 days), I kept the planting container in the apartment, placing it next to the sprouted tomato seedlings.
Since February this year turned out to be unusually warm for our latitudes, at the end of the month I took the tray of garlic out onto the glazed, but not insulated, balcony. The average daily temperature during this period did not drop below +3, but usually during the day in the sun the air warmed up to +15.
I placed the tray with feather garlic in the sunniest places on the windowsill, so the collection of greens went very quickly. The sprouts of the seedlings, initially light green, acquired an intense dark green color within a week.
Harvesting
Over the course of a month, two feathers about 20 cm high formed at the tip of each clove.
Already at this stage, I began cutting greens to add them to borscht and salads. If you wait another 2 weeks, then three leaf plates will form on the plants, and their height will reach 30 cm.
If you liked my experience, then try planting garlic using the described method. By the way, cloves of garlic can be harvested at any time of the year, but the growth of vegetative mass occurs especially quickly from the end of winter to mid-summer.
Wishing you good harvests on your windowsill all year round!
