Midsummer Farm News - October Newsletter 2011

Seed Garlic is actually the same as Eating Garlic. If you come by the farm this Saturday to purchase Seed Garlic from us, you could also just eat it!

You could actually plant the white garlic you buy at grocery stores too - although if they aren't organic, they may be sprayed with some sort of anti-sprouting agent. Also, the white bulbs at most grocery stores is a soft neck garlic variety, which are better grown in California. The hard necks grow better around here, and we get our seed garlic from NY state certified-organic garlic growers, so they usually do very well.

Spanish Roja Hardneck Garlic

We'll have a couple different hard neck varieties available on Saturday: Spanish Roja, Music, German White, and a couple others.

PLANTING GARLIC    We usually plant our garlic the first week of October. It is a very simple process - put toes (or cloves) into a 5-inch-deep hole or ditch; position them root-side-down and pointy-sprout-side-up; cover with soil. Before winter is upon us and the ground freezes, you should have between 3" and 5" of green top showing above the ground. If you don't get much green, don't fret, they usually catch up in the spring anyway.

I put a mulch around the started garlic plants of chopped up autumn leaves. No wild animals or birds will bother the garlic, but chickens will dig them up if they can get to them. (Especially if your chickens are in the habit of eating garlic like ours!) Right around Thanksgiving, I like to check them, pile the soil up around them, pat the row down, make sure the leaf mulch is still in place; I also put netting over the row to keep the leaves on top of the garlic as our field gets a lot of winter wind. I also like to check on the garlic a couple other times throughout the winter - if we get a lot of temperature fluctuation and not much snow, the toes may be heaved from the soil. If you find them heaved, and the soil is unfrozen, push them back in and pat the soil and mulch over them.....

SIZE OF THE TOE   Many people will swear that the bigger the toe, the bigger the resulting bulb. I really don't know. I don't bother planting the really small inner toes, as they are really not fully developed. So I only plant the mature outer toes with strong shells. And there are so many factors that influence growth throughout the course of the year, I really don't know if I've seen any true evidence that the bigger toes led to bigger bulbs....
   Garlic Scapes

SCAPES I would still plant garlic even if I never got bulbs in the fall. I adore the scapes you can harvest in June ! You only get scapes on Hard Neck garlic - the scape is the hard neck ... In the spring, a tough round stem starts to grow from the center of each garlic you planted. It forms a fabulous curly cue and a small garlic bulb on the end. If you leave the scape on the garlic plant, it will form a mini garlic bulb on the scape and you can eat that mini bulb as you would a regular bulb of garlic. However it is small, and if the plant is allowed to grow that aerial bulb, it will feel finished with its reproductive cycle, and not bother with growing a big garlic bulb under the soil. So most garlic growers cut the scape off once it has curled.

The scape is delicious! It has a mild, fresh, green, garlic flavor that happens to go fabulously with other spring flavors like pea shoots, morels, nettles, and asparagus. I chop it up fine and lightly sprinkle in salads, and I chop them into 1/2 inch size pieces and sauté them. So I'm thrilled when I harvest the scapes; when I harvest the bulbs in the late summer, it is a total bonus!

And from a cutflower perspective - if you put a bunch of scapes in a heavy vase, they'll start growing and twisting longer and longer, creating an amazing twirling display!

THE GARLIC GROWING CALENDAR:
~Plant toes in Mid-Fall in a spot where they can overwinter safely.
~June - harvest your scapes!
~As tops yellow and dry (August through September) - harvest bulbs.
~Cure bulbs by spreading or hanging in a open and dry area out of direct sunlight.
~Early October - Replant toes for next year's garlic.

SOME FURTHER THOUGHTS ON GARLIC
Garlic is a great companion plant for almost everything but peas and beans. (I usually plant all alliums away from peas and beans.) The only issue is that it is in its spot in the garden for a very long time, and you're planting it at a time when you're also cleaning up and putting in cover crops, so it becomes difficult to spread it around the garden. I usually plant my garlic all together in a single row that I can take care of easily. I then use onions and scallions that are planted in the spring, as companion plants, inter-planting them among the vegetable plants and flowers. (Note - you can also plant shallots now, same as you would garlic!)

Garlic also repels a lot of pests and is considered a super food - healthy and supportive for all animals and birds to eat.

I have been reading some very interesting things on making garlic tea sprays for preventing fungus and blights on vegetable plants like tomatoes and squash, which I am planning to try next year in case we have another super wet late summer. (I currently use a horsetail tea for that purpose, and it works well. But I'm thinking combining it with a garlic tea may make it even more effective.)

Garlic is different from most other alliums - one of the most dramatic is that it is safe to feed to your dog, despite the fact that onions are actually poisonous to dogs. But don't think that feeding your dog garlic, will keep mosquitoes, fleas, or ticks off the dog! That really is a myth. I think it may help keep bugs away to a degree from humans, but not from dogs. The garlic smell that would repel bugs, comes out in the perspiration ... humans can perspire from the entire skin surface, but dogs only perspire from their noses and pads on their paws. And note, if you're not sweating, then mosquitoes won't be repelled no matter how much garlic you consume each day!

But remember garlic is an important super food not just for repelling insects! Garlic has been celebrated as one of the most important medicines in the East and West for over 5,000 years. I can go and on listing all the fabulous effects it has on various ailments - but I tend to classify garlic as a super food - a nutrient dense element that can be added to the diet making the person consuming it healthier.

Garlic is addictive - the more you eat, the more you want - and you find yourself throwing more and more into everything you cook! Enjoy growing, harvesting, cooking, and eating it!