Monday, July 18, 2011

Garlic Day

Ch -  Blogger du jour...  
 
Garlic is one of our more unique crops, but probably the easiest and in need of the least amount of attention.  You cannot compare fresh garlic to what you get in the grocery store.  The fresh garlic is crisp and white and you can actually smell and taste the difference - taste it's freshness.  Definitely worth considering.
 
Garlic is planted in September and isn't harvested until the following July (now).  I consider this 2011 crop 2nd generation in that the cloves we planted in 2010 were from cloves we harvested the year before which were from the heads we bought at Sweetberry Farms the year before that (confusing right?).  I used the biggest heads as my seed heads (one clove = one seed) because that usually produces the biggest heads the following year.  We started with 46 plants (46 cloves).  I wanted to make sure we had enough to use during the 3-4 months after the harvest and also had enough to plant for next years crop.  Also, we wanted to start some for Gina and Tony in NY. 
 
Two months after planting, it started to look a lot like the garlic had gone crazy and started sprouting too early - before the snows began vs. after they finish in the spring. "OMG, did I plant too early?" (I had to get a little texting language in there - LOL)  "Will the cold kill them?"  When spring finally arrived, the sprigs started to grow again (although we did lose one plant over the winter - which still bothers me to no end.  What did I do wrong with that one?)  Enough... I'll stop obsessing.  Ok, so now  we have 45 huge stalks that gave us a mess of scapes about a month ago.  Scapes are the curlycue stalks that come out of the top and would eventually turn into flowers if you didn't cut them and immediately put them on the grill.  Cutting them off also helps enlarge the heads under the ground - that's what you want, big heads. 
 
OK, so today was the day.  I went out this morning... nice and early and started pulling up garlic.  The stalks had brown leaves and were ready to be pulled.  About midway through the aroma reminded me of a trip I took with my son several years ago.  We drove from San Francisco to Yosemite to go backpacking. 
 
 
 
Along the way, we went through the Garlic Capital of the World! Gilroy, CA and boy, could you smell the garlic for miles....  If you are ever in the area, make sure you roll up the windows.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
After a little reminiscing, I got all the garlic out of the ground, cleaned a little and laid out on the deck to start the drying process.  I'll move it downstairs to the closet to continue drying before we head to the beach on Friday.  
 
          If its anything like last years crop, we should have plenty of garlic for the next few months, enough to plant and a few to give away. :-)

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