Growing Appetite

by Author

Boe

Brenda

Les

Valria

In February of 2008 (that’s about 15 months ago!) I decided to plant garlic. Instead of taking the traditional route, where I’d go buy seed, or starter cloves from the garden store, I decided to go to the local co-op, and just buy some organic garlic and break up the cloves myself. Garlic from the seed shop tends to be overly expensive, and buying garlic from the co-op was substantially cheaper.

As a side note – if you decide to buy garlic from the store to plant, make sure that you’re buying organic garlic that hasn’t been treated with any sort of chemicals. Partly, because it’s bad to eat chemicals, but also because any garlic you’re buying at the grocery store will likely have been treated with an anti-sprouting chemical, so it won’t sprout in the store. Which is why you can keep store-bought garlic at home for months before it ever starts to sprout.

Needless to say, you don’t want to put anything in your garden that is already hindered by chemicals, so go with the most organic, untreated, pesticide free garlic you can.

So, I planted this garlic in February of 08, and I kinda forgot about it. That is, until about September of 2008 when I found 6″ green sprouts coming out of the ground! It took me a while to remember what was happening in that corner of the garden, but when I remembered the garlic planted there, I was terribly excited! I just couldn’t figure out why it took so long to sprout!

So, I let it grow all winter, and when spring came, the puffy flower-ball at the top emerged, and the lower foliage began to die off. It was at this point that I remembered the French technique of breaking the necks of the garlic plants! Basically, what this technique suggests, is that once the bottom leaves of the plant start to dry, and turn brown, bend the neck of the garlic until the top of the plant are laying on the ground, but the bulb is still buried in the ground. Put a brick on the plant, and wait for about a month. Continue to water as normal, and the plant will put all of it’s effort and resources into building a big, healthy bulb, instead of trying to keep the foliage going. Leave the broken plants under the bricks, though, so you know where to find the garlic later!

After a month of keeping these broken necked garlic in the ground, I pulled up a dozen heads of beautiful garlic!

Wash off the dirt (use a scrubby vegetable brush!) and peel off the hard crusted dirt and garlic skin, and you’ll have beautiful garlic ready to eat. If it’s more garlic than you’ll use before it goes bad, puree it with some olive oil, and keep it in the freezer for up to a year!