Garlic growing...

My life is a bit strange at the moment, I was supposed to finish uni, find a job, find somewhere to rent and have a lovely eco-friendly vegan hippy-fied house. I have not found a job and I'm back living with my mum. Sigh. So...I'm not allowed to dig up her garden to make a veggie plot. Instead I've turned to a garlic growing empire. I'm not sure where the garlic we buy is from - China produces the most in the world, not sure if it's grown in England much, but growing my own would mean no food miles at all, and has the added excitement factor to fill my unemployed days! (has it grown yet? Has it grown yet? Has it grown YET?!)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Garlic

I read online that garlic LOVES growing in pots so I got some old pots from my mum (thanks mum!). In the UK we use 500 million plastic plant pots a year!!!!!!!! So if there weren't millions of spare plant pots in the greenhouse I would have used jam jars or cut down plastic bottles or made some out of papermache or something, but as they were there I've made use of them. I also made plant labels with what they are and the date they were planted, out of some cardboard I found in the recycling bin - which will probably go soggy when I move the garlic empire outside!

www.bbc.co.uk/gardening/today_in_your_garden/ethical/

Then I did this (based on many garlic how-to's I found by googling)...
1. Get a bulb of garlic (mine was organic - yey! but from a supermarket - boo!).
2. Separate as many cloves of garlic as you want plants to grow.
3. Fill a plant pot, or container you want to grow a plant in, with crocks (I'm not really sure how crocks work, mum says something to do with draining water, but you need some smashed up terracotta plant pot, or pebbles or bit of polystyrene in the bottom of your pot anyway!) then fill up to the top with compost or soil.
4. Poke a hole an inch deep into your pot.
5. Put the garlic flat end down, pointy end up into the hole and cover back over with soil.
6. Water, I used some nice rain water from mums water butt (thanks mum!). This proved my crocks were really good and drainy - lots of water drained out of my pots!

I have no idea if this will work, I really hope so - I have (hopefully) 6 garlic plants growing, when they're ready I'm going to eat 5 of them and plant the cloves from the other again, so hopefully I'm at the start of a self-perpetuating garlic growing empire!