Weeks ago, before the lockdown, I spent a glorious day at the Koonya garlic festival. While there I purchased garlic bulbs and reserved some for planting. Recently I have wanted to plant them where the colourful cosmos plants were still flourishing;  I have been waiting and waiting to take the plunge and pull them out.  The building of the hugelkultur gave me the soil and the space for the garlic.

I had two types ready for use. Foolishly I haven’t recorded the names of each; all I can say is one shows purple and the other white.

I split the bulbs into cloves; 15 from the purple and 17 from the white.

I pushed each into the hugelkultur mound sufficient to barely cover their tops. The garlic cloves were planted on each of the two sides of the mound and at different heights. This is an experiment to determine the best location for their best growth – which gets the best light, and working on the assumption that lower down will be moister I will be looking to see which gets too much or too little water.

A couple of months ago I collected seed from my silver beet and three weeks ago I added two seeds into a small tray.

They sprouted and have now been planted onto the mound. A few seeds I collected from my lettuce were sprouted and ready to plant.

Some went into the mound and some into a pot inside the house in my sunny front entrance. The slight depressions on the mound indicate the garlic placement.

With a fine eye you can see one silver beet and 6 lettuces seedlings at across the lower left end of the mound.

In a spot of sunlight.

The mound offers a great deal of surface area and so more planting is necessary to build up a total food cover.

I planted a few lettuce cotyledons in a pot for my sunny front porch. They have amused me following the light; towards the window in the daytime and upright at night.

Those in the punnet on the plate are now back outside in the ground in full sun during the day and growing well.  All have at least three leaves, so the changes haven’t retarded their growth.