Our first big experiment was growing garlic. It’s garlic growing country here in Grafton so we grew heaps of it.

First step was creating the garden beds.  We don’t have any machinery yet so we dug out the grass and flipped it over on itself to create mounds and then covered them with compost.  A truck load of compost doesn’t look like much on a big back yard

Digging out the grass

Kids enjoying work!???

Truck load of compost

Pearce, Lucky and Karl working hard

Karl got a heap of garlic seed from a farmer down the road.  For those that don’t know – a garlic seed is simply a clove of garlic.  Here’s Karl and the kids sorting out the seed into big, medium and small seed piles.  You plant the big ones so they grow big garlic bulbs and you eat the smaller ones.  This is Russian or Elephant garlic.  They grow huge bulbs and are quite mild.

Watching the garlic grow

We harvested them about 6 months later and enlisted our older kids friends to come and help.  They just so happened to come camping at our place at the right time.  Thanks you guys!!!

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After harvesting you need to dry them out.  Karl learnt the technique of plaiting bunches of garlic from youtube…and we ended up with a years supply of garlic for our family, friends and neighbours!!! We’ve replanted garlic for this season and we still have a heap of garlic in the shed…anyone want some?