Garlic 2.0

A lot of what happened in our garden last year started with the idea of growing our own garlic. At that time, we didn't know anybody who did, but it seemed like an interesting idea. We use garlic in the kitchen, but not huge quantities of it, so it seemed very possible to grow enough garlic for our household.

In the fall of 2007 I started to poke around the Internet looking for information, and ended up buying a starter package of garlic bulbs for planting from The Garlic Store. The sampler had 8 garlic varieties, and came all bundled together with a little leaflet explaining how to plant it and care for it.

Including in the sampler were (according to their website):

Elephant Garlic Clove - The giant clove will grow out to massive bulb, the best for roasting garlic
Polish White - The large, round bulbs have a cream colored wrapper with a real punchy taste.
Brown Tempest- If eaten raw, the cloves have a fiery flavor, but that mellows to a pleasing aftertaste
Susanville- a beautiful artichoke variety, with large cream/pink bulbs, similar to Inchelium; has a compelling raw flavor, one of the most popular, and a long storage life
Red Janice - very hard to find; from Nmarazeni, Republic of Georgia; a turban with puplish stripes and a taste that is almost sweet and spicy
Inchelium Red - our biggest selling softneck; a Rodale kitchen taste test winner; gorgeous cream/pink wrappers
Applegate - a softneck artichoke-type from the Pacific Northwest
Bronock Red - a small-ish red garlic that they have since stopped selling.

Most of these grew beautifully in our garden. Every single clove of garlic that we planted sprouted and produced a head of garlic. Some were much better than others. Without a question, our favorite was Polish White, which has a lovely flavor when roasted, very easy to recognize.

We started harvesting garlic in July (Inchellium was our first garlic to be ready) and we didn't buy any garlic until December, even though we cooked almost every day this year. We also harvested garlic scapes (edible garlic flowers, delicious in stews). Our garlic harvest was a big success.

In the Fall of 2008 we planted the remainder of our garlic crop. 90 cloves of smaller garlics were planted in square foot beds, along with 4 large Elephant garlic cloves. Within 10 days all had sprouted and were growing beautifully. Even after a long, cold winter all the garlic is looking verdant and green.

I can't wait for this year's crop. Garlic independence might seem like a trivial thing, but it makes us really happy to know that we're growing our very own garlic and we don't have to purchase any of it!