Stinking Rose

Hard to believe it's garlic time already. Wasn't it just summer, like, last week? But no, we have to accept that we're deep into October and it's time to start planning for next year. We have the good fortune to call Roman from Valley Fall Farm in Johnsonburg our bee mentor and source for obscure and interesting varieties of garlic and shallots. Allium hipsters! Did you even know we existed? Because, for the record, we grew French Gray shallots way before they were cool.

Roman gave an enlightening (and delicious) talk at a recent Transition Newton event on the health benefits of honey and garlic. But you know what? We mostly think they're tasty--really tasty--which is why we're cultivating both in as large quantities as possible. Every year it seems like we're planting a ton of garlic, but when harvest time rolls around in July it seems like such a pittance. Which is why we're tripling next year's crop. We've got German White, German Hardy, Georgian Fire, and Mark's inevitable favorite, Korean Mad Dog Red--about 175 cloves all told. Along with 75 shallots. Didn't somebody say it was time for a break after the insanity of late-summer harvesting and putting up? Apparently not yet.

What are we doing differently this time? The weeds got the better of us this year, so we're putting down black plastic for a weed barrier. We're also mounding the beds, putting in irrigation and composting the heck out of the soil (Roman grows his garlic in what he calls "black muck"). Instead of growing shallots from seed in the spring, we're planting whole shallots in the fall, the same as garlic, which means they can get an early start putting their energy into forming bulbs that will split into more bulbs next year, resulting in bigger shallots and more of them.

Stinking roses indeed. Give me a bunch of garlic over a bunch of roses any day.

Cloves of Raven Dark

By the light of an infernal moon, we plunged cloves into the black earth, one by one, with needles of sleet piercing our weary backs... oh wait, that's another blog. What I meant to say is that we finally scraped the grass off a few meager square feet of earth tonight in order to plant some garlic. There was a sense of haste brought on by the prospect of sleet and snow tomorrow night. (Seriously, WTF, October?) Since everything seems to take longer at the new homestead, we didn't even get out to the garden until after sunset. But considering the agonizingly slow progress of the deer fence and the lack of funds to buy the fruit trees we're coveting, this garlic is an accomplishment. We actually planted something on our new plot of land!

Mark has been spending all of his meager spare time digging trenches and post holes for the deer fence. Naturally, it's taking much longer than expected. The next step is to pour the concrete and get those posts in before the ground freezes. Considering the brutal frost on our cars this morning, that might be sooner than expected. Cue roar of the frosty undead...

Garlic, For Julie

The other day, our friend Julie wondered aloud how a clove of garlic transforms into a whole head of garlic underground. It was one of those questions that seems obvious, but I realized I didn't actually know myself. While cutting up some of my favorite green garlic today, I noticed the interrupted process was right before my eyes. I'm not sure if you can see the baby garlic cloves forming in this photo (you can click to enlarge), but damn, they're tasty.

Garlicky

The first thing we did upon returning home, before unpacking, even, was to harvest our garlic. It was long overdue, and we were very excited, being seasoned (heh) garlic-lovers. Still adjusting to the time difference, Kate woke up in the wee hours of Sunday morning and just had to pull one of those brown stalks out of the ground.

The result is pretty rewarding. Fresh garlic has a very different character from the kind at the grocery store. It's crisper, with the texture of an apple, and the flavor is milder. We made a loaf of garlic bread with 5 cloves, and the result was pleasant, not overwhelming. This week we'll be roasting some to spread on bread or toss with pasta and zucchini.

Now is the time to order more garlic for next year, and Kate is eager to get a softneck variety so she can dry the garlic in one of those braids that you can hang up and snip off a head whenever you need it. You can't do that with the hardneck kind. We also wanted to grow some softnecks so we would have scapes in the spring, but although the scapes we got from our CSA share were unique and tasty, they weren't the revelation we had hoped they'd be.

Next up: The full report.