Garlic

I love garlic. I don't mean that powdered stuff you buy in the spice aisle, I don't even mean the stuff in the jar that comes pre-minced. Garlic grows in the ground. In my climate, it is planted about now. It sends up a weak little shoot something like the green part of a green onion and only starts to develop when it's warm in the spring. If dug early, there is not much below ground but the original seed clove. It and the stock has a mild onion flavor and can certainly be used as such. They only plump out into something that looks like garlic in the first warm days of early summer. In my climate, they are dug in late June, but I'm sure that is different in other areas.

If you've never dug garlic, potatoes, onions etc., it is quite exciting to stick the shovel in alongside the plant and lift it out. The dirt falls away as you see the treasure for the first time. Garlic is very wet when first dug. It will rot quickly if not dried thoroughly. I suppose there are various ways to do this, but I've had good luck tying a string around bunches of it and hanging the string from my fence. You need air to be able to circulate around it. The warm days of summer turn the leaves around the cloves dry and hardens it a bit. I clip of a bit of it as needed and leave it there the whole summer. At the end of the summer, I cut it down and store it in my garage frig until I need it. This photo is a a part of this year's crop.

I haven't got any planted this year. We'll see, but if I don't get it done, there will be plenty in farmer's market come next summer