The garlic was harvested last week, some of the largest yet, with big beautiful cloves. My hands, the shed, and my garden clothes hanging up smelled of that inarguable scent for days. It has faded, but I am still satisfied when I pass by the open shed door catching a glimpse of bunches of garlic hanging there to dry.
We have had rain everyday for what seems like a month. It has been the wettest July in recorded history (we are all familiar with that sort of phrase). But lots of moisture is good for garlic and we have a harvest to prove it. Garlic is easy to grow, buckets of rain or not and uses very little room. I encourage any of you who use it in cooking to throw a few cloves in the ground this fall, top it with some compost and then watch for its thin green spike in the spring. Set aside a couple of the largest cloves from a bulb you pick up at the farmer’s market for planting. There are two types of garlic amongst the many varieties- soft neck and hard neck. You won’t know what type you have until next summer. Hard neck produces a thick hard stem and a garlic scape (curled top of stem with flower bud at end). Soft neck flops over and turns brown when it is ready to harvest. Soft neck is traditionally used in garlic braids. We grow some of both in our garden.
My favorite way to eat garlic this time of year is roasted. Cut the top of a large garlic bulb, exposing the tip of each clove. Set it in an ovenproof dish and generously drizzle olive oil over the bulb. Roast it in a 400-degree oven for about twenty minutes, until the garlic cloves are mushy. Spread it on crusty French bread, served with slices of tomato, basil and mozzarella. Yum! I hope you are all enjoying the bounty of this time of year!Garlic Harvest
