A garderner has shared his ultimate hack of how to make a garlic bulb you buy at the supermarket last for a whole year.
Garlic is one of the most popular ingredients used in cooking. With its unique flavour and health benefits, it goes into a wide variety of cusisines from across the globe to enhance any dishes.
Due to the popularity of the common cooking ingrediet, gardnerer Simon Akeroyd, who is the author of several gardening books and has over 936,000 followers on Instagram, has shared his top tips on how you can get an abundance of garlic by using just one garlic bulb.
His trick? Turning each garlic clove into a garlic plant to grow your own bulbs in your garden.
In a video, he showed how he’d put a whole garlic bulb on top of a glass of water, making sure not to drench it, as he explained: “If you place it in contact with water, it does this. It starts to grow roots and shoots.
He went on to show the same garlic bulb now with several white roots hanging down from the part that had been in the water while green shoots had started growing from the top part. He carefully pulled the garlic apart, showing that each clove had several roots hanging from it.
Simon went on to explain: “Pull the individual cloves apart. You now have loads of garlic plants, which you can plant in your garden or in a pot.”
For the next step, Simon explained: “Plant garlic cloves 12cm (5 inches) apart. They like well-drained fertile soil in full sun. Each clove will grow into a new bulb containing loads more cloves.”
The garlic is ready to be harvested when the lower leaves start to turn yellow and brown and the bulbs are fully developed.
And don’t worry if you get a lot of bulbs ready at the same time, as you’ll be able to store the bulbs for months. Simon showed that he’d planted his how garlic bulbs and keeps it hanging in his cottage for when he needs it.
“These garlics in my cottage were harvested last summer and still great now,” he explained. “You can never have enough garlic.”