Keeley’s Cuckoo cloves

•  Keeley Lester in front of a patch that will be planted with garlic in coming weeks. 

By Daisy Baker,
April 13, 2022

When Keeley Lester moved to her Cuckoo property there was an established patch of garlic in the garden. 

As a keen veggie gardener she decided to continue growing, planting out one bed, which quickly turned into three beds and then soon enough the whole patch was planted out with garlic.  

Before long, she had more garlic than she could eat or gift and started sharing her garlic growing ventures on Instagram.

“There’s only so much garlic you can eat and give to your family and friends and I think they were probably getting sick of hearing me talk about it,” she laughed.

Ms Lester said it’s a steady process which is quite labour intensive as all of the planting and harvesting is done by hand.

“The downfall with garlic is you can’t plant in the same place consecutively so we’ll work our way around the garden,” she said.

“It’s a very long process especially in terms of growing time but it’s very easy in that you put it in and leave it.

“In the next two months it will be planted and then it grows for up to nine months.

“They love winter because they need that dormant time to store their energy then they take off in spring and will be harvested in about November through to February, depending on the variety.”

Once harvested, the garlic cures for six weeks, hanging in the garden shed before being bagged in 100gram lots for sale.

Ms Lester said the sandy Cuckoo soil makes for good growing conditions.

This year Ms Lester has eight varieties to plant, including inferno which is meant to be spicy and a giant elephant variety which is milder than regular garlic.

Some types are better suited to roasting or sautéing and have different flavours.

“Every time you break of an individual piece of garlic to use, that’s what you use as a piece of seed,” she explained.

“I’ve gone by weight at the moment because I can’t break them up and see how many individual plants until the day before [planting] because they like to stay together.

“I’ll probably plant a maximum of five kilos, which doesn’t sound like a lot in terms of a normal vegetable but with garlic you’ll probably get 15 or so kilos. When you buy one bulb that’s 50 grams.”

She laughed saying that as she experiments with different varieties and growing conditions, her understanding of the plant is increasing but so is her box of ‘failures’.

Nothing goes to waste though, with these smaller cloves made into powder or diced. 

As the plant grows, it shoots out a scape before it flowers which can be cut off to promote growth of the bulb.

Ms Lester said she either fries up the delicious scapes with butter and eats them or dehydrates them and turns them into powder.

Looking ahead to the future, Ms Lester said she will experiment with making herb mixes to use as a rub on meat.

You can follow along Ms Lester’s garlic growing on Instagram @cuckoocloves.