Garlic seemed like a bit of a challenge, and it sure provides some food for thought.

The garlic clove I posted about earlier simply stopped growing when its internal nutrient suply ran out, but still had a little surprise in store:

The clove had sat a little too deep in the rockwool, it shriveled, and when I removed the remains, mold had taken root.

As you can see, it had nevertheless developed a nice little new bulb; the roots weren’t too shabby either.

I then started with two cloves from garlic I had bought later, and which somehow already looked different.

Sure enough, they sprouted in a different way (more than one shoot) and are brighter in colour as well.

Garlic apparently is mainly cloned today, not germinated from seed, and commercial plants seem to have lost the ability to flower.

If these two (all three are organic) fail to grow beyond a certain stage as well, I’ll order some heirloom garlic which still has that ability.

“… Anything leafy and green, essentially. You can’t grow carrots and you can’t grow root vegetables. Potatoes, garlic, those things don’t work.”

Mmmmmh. I can accept carrots and potatoes. But I wanted to try garlic, to be able harvest its leaves and shoots.

I know, it’s sitting very high up, but I want to give it every chance to grow sideways.

And it’s not as though root vegetables in hydroponics were generally impossible, as you can see here (3:44).

We shall see. So far it’s looking good.