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Hi All,

I have finally received my order of seed garlic bulbs, given when I ordered them I had hoped to have them much sooner but such is life.

I hope to get approximately 40 worthwhile cloves for planting out in two rows of 20 cloves.

As is my want I will plant out all of these cloves using a bulb planter, I will take out a hole about 5 to 6 inches deep.

The TP amended cloves will receive approximately two handfuls of my TP compost and be placed 1 inch from the surface of the soil to the tip of each clove. These will then be covered with the parent soil to ground level.

The non-amended cloves will receive approximately two handfuls of my normal home made compost and planted in similar fashion.

Now when the amended cloves show first foliage I will inject approximately 3 to 5 ml's of VAM gel into the area of the roots of each TP amended clove.

From this point on both rows will receive the same attention with regard to watering and weeding during their life cycle. I will endeavour to site both rows with regard to available sunlight and maintaining a good distance between the rows.

I have always given my garlic 2 or 3 feeds of diluted liquid seaweed during the season, I will therefore continue this practice with the non-amended cloves only.

It is now down to careful monitoring of the respective life cycles of both rows of cloves.

The only intervention will be the swift removal of seed heads as and when they appear to ensure all available nutrition goes into the forming bulb. These seed stalks are a lovely addition to a stir fry stew or hotpot meal.

I feel that I have done all that is possible regarding the vegetation used in my dedicated compost bins and the special charcoal that I have used to layer them.

This I believe is as close as I can get to the native mixture of both the vegetation and special charcoal that they used.

The supplementing of this TP compost with a commercial VAM product is I believe necessary to encourage these fungi to take up residence within the soil.

Now depending on the amount of inoculated charcoal within the soil these fungi should multiply in numbers as spores.

The leaching of soluble carbon from the charcoal should maintain these spores within the soil. This I think is why they remain viable for such long periods of time within an inoculated charcoal soil.

The addition of VAM's I believe will only be necessary for the first two seasons. Thereafter there should be sufficient numbers of VAM spores within the amended soil to begin the Terra Process.

These are just my thoughts others will disagree.

uriel13

The mind is like a parachute, its totally usless unless its open