Garlic right on time
It was a weekend to celebrate. Calvin Coolidge and Bill Withers both had birthdays from beyond. Also, it’s been exactly 218 years since President Jefferson announced he bought 828,000 square miles in the middle of this continent from France for $18.12 per square mile or four cents per acre. At that price, my happy piece of paradise would be worth $.42.
However, the reason to celebrate on my 42-cents worth of paradise was the 10th annual garlic harvest. A few chickadees, titmice and tanagers gathered to serenade the event. My shovel and I made quick work of the harvest, and now the shed will smell special for a month.
I haven’t bought garlic since 2012. In autumn of 2011, two garlic bulbs sprouted in the kitchen, so I separated the cloves and planted them. The young plants survived a tough winter and produced a bountiful harvest the next spring. I kept two or three of those bulbs for replanting, and I have repeated the plan every year since.
Even a backyard gardener with a small space can grow her own garlic year after year.
Fertile, friable soil is a good place to start. Place the cloves pointy end up two inches deep. It’s easy. I add a generous layer of mulch to protect those cloves because they will be in place for the entire NBA season.
The upright leaves will announce the plants are ready for harvest by turning yellow or brown and flopping over. Some experts recommend harvesting when the first three or four leaves turn brown but some are still green. I wonder what credentials a person would need to be considered a garlic expert.
Once the entire plants – bulbs, leaves and all – are carefully shoveled out of the only place they ever knew, brush off the remaining dirt but do not get the bulbs wet. Cure the bulbs for about a month in a cool, dry place away from sunlight. I spread them out in the box the weed-eater came in, but some folks tie several plants together and hang them from the rafters. Either way works. After curing time is up, trim the roots and clip off the leaves because the bulbs should be ready for storage.
Properly cured and stored bulbs might last until your harvest next year. There are different varieties of garlic, and some store longer than others. All of them store best at cool temperatures in well-ventilated spaces.
Culinary uses of garlic go back 5000 years. It belongs in pasta sauce, for example. Garlic pieces and olive oil toasted on French bread turns it into garlic bread. Aioli is minced garlic mixed with olive oil and egg yolks. You can roast the entire bulb and eat it. Diced garlic spices up stir fries, stews, sauces and curries. You can get garlic ice cream at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in Gilroy, California.
The apex, however, of the culinary use of garlic – what 5000 years of cooking with garlic led us to – is the garlic fries at Oracle Park in San Francisco.
Garlic also is famous for its powerful medicinal applications. In his book The Green Pharmacy, Dr. James A. Duke references 37 afflictions from high blood pressure, motion sickness, athlete’s foot to cardiac arrhythmia for which garlic is beneficial. During a flu outbreak in South Africa in 1961, baboons who were ill were witnessed foraging for wild garlic, so locals with the flu did the same and found relief from their symptoms.
When the flu spread through the Soviet Union in 1965, the government flew in 500 tons of garlic and the state news agency encouraged everyone to eat more of it to prevent the spread of the flu.
Consuming garlic helps a person avoid catching a cold or flu from others because your garlic breath might keep everyone at a healthy distance.