It is Time to Plant Garlic
One of the comforting aspects of gardening is being immersed in seasonal rituals. Fall is typically a time for harvesting and storing food…
One of the comforting aspects of gardening is being immersed in seasonal rituals. Fall is typically a time for harvesting and storing food for the winter, however, it is also a time to plant. In fact, now is the time to plant garlic. Garlic is one of my favorite plants. I have planted, harvested and saved my own garlic seedstock for the past twenty years. If you save cloves to plant from the largest bulbs, garlic will adapt to your soils and climate and it will improve every year. Connecting with the soil and your food in this way might just help you become native to your place and improve every year as well. Planting garlic is simple. You break the heads apart into individual cloves and plant them with the pointy top of the clove pointing up in rows about 4–8 inches apart. The rows can be anywhere between 12–18 inches apart. Then you cover the top of the clove with 1 inch of soil. In cold climates it is helpful to cover the soil with mulch. You can use straw or fall leaves. We use a combination of leaves and grass from our yard. We have found that combination to work well. The chopped up leaves and grass tend not to form a mat and they stay in place better than whole leaves. Now all you have to do is wait 9 months to harvest.
There are two types of garlic: soft neck and hard neck. Grocery stores tend to carry softneck garlic. I greatly prefer hard neck varieties. Softneck garlic stores well, but that is due, in part, to the fact that they have tenacious wrappers that cling to the cloves. It also produces many small cloves. This is part of the reason people do not like garlic. Peeling all of those small cloves can be daunting. Hard neck garlic produces fewer and larger cloves. The varieties that I grow produce 4–6 large cloves per plant and they are relatively easy to peel. I cut the base of the clove off with a sharp knife and then crush the clove slightly with the heel of a knife and at this point the wrapper usually separates from the clove. Now you have a large easy to peel clove with good flavor to work with. Hardneck garlic tends to have better flavor and they can be more mild than the softneck types.
Garlic grows roots in the fall and then sits and waits for spring. They will be one of the first plants to emerge in the spring and March is when you need to check on them. Some plants may not be able to push through the mulch, so March is the time to walk down the row and remove any mulch that is blocking your newly emerging plants. Some plants may appear yellow at this stage, but they will quickly turn green and start growing. At this point you can remove any weeds that appear over the summer as you wait for the plants to grow. They will shoot up and develop graceful arching leaves and a central flower stalk. You can cut or snap off the flower stalk when it starts to straighten up sometime in June. This is called a scape and it is delicious. You remove the capsule on top and cut it up and treat it like green beans. They soften up when you cook them and they have a nice green garlic flavor. You can add them to other dishes or make pesto out of them. We turn all of our scapes into pesto.
At this stage your cloves are swelling and now you are approaching harvest. This is when you watch your plants for signs of dormancy. The leaves will start to turn yellow from the bottom up and you want to harvest your garlic when they have 4–5 green leaves. Each leaf represents a wrapper on the bulb and you typically lose one wrapper during harvest. You want enough wrappers left to protect your bulb during storage. Garlic will store for around 9 months, but it loses some quality toward the end of that period. One way to extend your fresh garlic season is to plant cloves to produce green garlic. This is a young plant and they are similar to green onions. You can eat the entire plant. For this you just plant the cloves close together. Something like 1 inch apart in rows that are 6 inches apart. You can fit a lot of plants into a small space and you harvest these plants in the spring once they have reached the diameter of a pencil.
When it is time to harvest I use a digging fork to gently lift the bulbs out of the soil. Garlic can bruise easily, so it helps to think of your bulbs like eggs and to treat them gently. I lift them up, remove big pieces of soil and lay them down in groups in the row. Once I finish the bed I take the plants over to an outdoor table and set up my cleaning station. This is where I cut off the roots and trim the tops. I group the bulbs by size and tie them up with twine in groups of ten. You can also cut the stems and leave a 2–3 inch section of stem and store them in mesh bags. I take my bundles of plants down into the basement and I hang them up and run a fan and dehumidifier for two weeks. During this time the garlic will dry down. That is it! A nice seasonal ritual that connects you to the earth and gives you one of the healthiest foods you can eat.
Many people will claim that they do not like garlic. Do not let that dissuade you from growing your own. Cooking softens the texture and flavor of garlic. One way to experiment with this is to roast a head of garlic or cook cloves immersed in olive oil until soft. They will be soft, rich and buttery. If you add garlic to your rice and beans and apply heat to it the garlic will add a compelling richness to your dishes. At this point it will also have enriched your life.