Garlic Galore!

Last year was the first time we ever planted garlic the way you’re supposed to: in the Fall.  Our seed was questionable at best – wrinkled, spotty leftovers that had been forgotten in the cellar.  But our row was tilled and it was all we had at the time, and we missed the local country store’s garlic seed sale.

Now, every time you put a seed in the ground, it is an act of faith.  You are trusting, expecting, hoping that God will work that miracle again, bringing life from death.  However, our faith was a little weak at this planting…

But God is faithful!  Sure enough, the first signs of life were in the garlic row in March, after the deep frosts had thawed.

Towards June we marveled at those curly scapes twisting to the sky – how does He do it? We enjoyed heaping plates of oh-so-rare scape Alfredo, and the rest was washed, cut, and frozen for future stir-fry and whatever else might need that uber-garlicky kick.  In the past I’ve tried pickling it, drying it, and blending it to freeze in ice cube trays (the freezer went out on the last one – it did not smell pretty… too.much.garlic…), but this is our favorite and most versatile form of preservation for scapes.

Scapes being washed

Sliced and sauteed in butter

… in a white sauce …

with chicken!

As usual, Father just had to pull one up, to see what was happening underground.  Remarkably the root structure of those fall-planted bulbs were much more developed than our (typically) spring-planted garlic of the past.

Dried tips of the garlic leaves

Sometimes lovely showers keep things from drying out!

Over mature garlic bursting from it’s wrapper

We waited until the tips of the leaves began to brown, and watched their papery wrappers.  (For us, that’s typically the end of June).  In the past we’ve harvested too late, and the cloves began to separate, and burst their paper wrappers, making them much more fragile, harder to clean, and less store-able.  Watering is withheld (unless it rains!) a few days prior to picking so there is less mud and soil sticking to the bulbs.  With a turning fork, or shovel, Father loosens the soil, and the rest of us get the satisfactory task of popping those savory heads out of the ground.  We lay them on a tarp to air dry for a day on the covered back porch, then tie them into bundles to hang and dry completely.  The bulbs that are too pretty to just throw in a bin get braided into a tasty wall hanging to decorate the kitchen, and season the meals.

Father loosens the soil while Richard looks on

Little Gail examines the garlic

The rest get their tops and roots trimmed, dirty paper removed (but don’t take off so much that you can see the individual cloves) and sorted.  Ugly or tiny ones are dried and pulverized into garlic powder, pretty ones are made into precious pickled garlic, which we share with those we truly love, and the rest are kept in a box in the root cellar to be used throughout the year, then planted again in the Fall… if we remember again!

So, if you have been waiting to try to grow garlic, give it a shot!  Fall planting really does improve head size. But, even when we’ve planted in March and harvested in late June, we always end up with more than when we began – plus we get the bonus of scapes!  It is glorious to watch God at work in the Garden.

 If ye walk in my statutes, and keep my commandments, and do them; 
Then I will give you rain in due season, and the land shall yield her increase,
and the trees of the field shall yield their fruit.
Leviticus 26:3-4