Category Archives: garlic

“Garlic is as good as ten mothers”

I harvested my garlic crop yesterday. Lots of beautiful heads now cure in my kitchen. I harvest the garlic when 4-5 of the leaves have browned but the paper that surrounds the head of cloves is still fully intact. This means … Continue reading

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This year’s garlic

This year, the garlic is slow to mature and be harvested. Usually I’m harvesting my garlic around the 4th of July but this year it’s not ripe yet for harvest and curing. Perhaps it’s the long, cool spring we’ve had. … Continue reading

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More incredible scapes

As I’ve written before, garlic scapes are such a delicacy. A fine and abundant crop this year. And the promise of good hardneck garlic to harvest and cure next month.

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Garlic scapes: good eating

Hardneck garlic (as opposed to softneck) makes a curlique flower stalk that is delicious eating. These curlique stalks are called scapes. Right now the scapes are perfect for eating. You can tell because they curl in on themselves. As the … Continue reading

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What’s up

Edible gardens too have perennials, plants that have a life span of more than two years. They go dormant each fall and return in the spring. The perennials are always the first up. Here’s some of what’s appearing in my … Continue reading

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Garlic pickled

This year I’ve a lot of garlic to enjoy. Some of it I will pickle and preserve. Here’s two recipes for pickled garlic which is a real delicacy. sweet pickled garlic from an 18th century Ottoman recipe from Turquoise: a chef’s … Continue reading

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Garlic planting season

October is the month for planting garlic which will be harvested next July. You can plant into November — and several gardeners I know do plant late — but late planting reduces the number of days the garlic has to … Continue reading

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Garlic

Last two weeks, I harvested garlic and now it cures. This is garlic planted last October. I’d planted eight varieties so there’s porcelain white, pink and purple garlic hanging in bundles from every knob in my home. It smells great. … Continue reading

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Scapes

Scapes are the flower stalks of hardnecked garlic. Once the garlic bulb begins to form, the plant puts up a curlicue of a flower stalk. (Remember this is garlic that was planted last October and will be harvested next month.) … Continue reading

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Winter harvest, part two

The final taste of summer was the basil paste I took from the freezer. Once it defrosted, I was eating big spoonfulls of dark green sunshine. It’s the fresh basil I harvested last October and Turkish olive oil made into … Continue reading

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