This morning, fall cleaning began and with it, the bringing in of the fall harvest. My husband Jim and I began the day with a walk through the gardens, gathering heaps of still-ripening Brandywine and New Girl tomatoes, and winter squash. We also walked the perimeter of the solar fence, checking for deer prints. A couple of the innocent-eyed garden raiders were spotted Saturday night in our neighbor Tom's back yard, grazing on the fallen crab apples. Jim spent the night worrying that the solar fence wouldn't hurt, but so far, the deer seem to be sensing the presence of a fence and steering clear.
In the afternoon, when my marathon-recovering legs couldn't really take much more movement, I sat down on the deck with our huge tub of cured garlic heads, and began snipping stalks, preparing to store the heads for winter. We harvested the garlic in late July, and have been enjoying it fresh from the stalk since then as it dried out slowly in the barn. Jim has been helping himself to the stash liberally as he's cooked up and canned jars and jars of salsa, tomato sauce, and paste. And about a week ago, I added about a dozen bulbs to the stash of sixty or so that I had set aside for next year's crop. Even so, we still had plenty. By the time I was finished, the bulbs had filled two shoeboxes, a five-inch diameter planter, and two of the quart-size green felt paper boxes typically used for selling fruits.
As I snipped, I found myself pulling out some of the smaller heads, figuring that we could dry them to make garlic powder. I also discovered that some flowers that had formed on the garlic scapes in early summer hadn't been snipped off in time, and had dried on the stalks. I picked up one of the flowers in my hand and to my surprise, a couple hundred tiny seeds -- each just slightly larger than a grain of arborio rice -- fell out as I crumpled the flower in my hand. I had saved another quart-load of flowers from the scape-snipping and decided to see if they had dried, as well.
By the time I was done, I had filled half a sixteen ounce Ball jar with these little garlic seeds.
I popped a couple in my mouth. They tasted like small shots of garlic -- strong, savory, and pungent. I began to wonder what it might be like to cook with these little granules, and how they would do if I planted them, as well.
Some work with the Internet and a brief e-mail consultation with my former Seattle Times colleague and longtime farming friend Ivan suggested that growing garlic from these seeds was possible but not often done. Using the seeds -- which are known as bulbis -- also was possible but not often done.
All these additional possibilities surrounding garlic started to make my heart pump with excitement. I will give them a try!
Garlic grows fairly easily from cloves. Most people who live in areas with colder winters plant the garlic in the fall -- the last week of October is our target date, weather permitting -- after everything else has been harvested and put away for the winter. I've heard that it's possible to plant garlic in the spring, if cloves are kept in the freezer for a spell. The cloves go dormant in frozen soil, and after the snow melts, the green shoots are typically one of the first appearances of spring.
It's possible to harvest what's called green garlic in the late spring. These plants are typically eaten stalk and all, and are stronger than even the strongest bulbs. Scapes form in June and July, and should be cut off so that the plant directs its growing energy into the bulb beneath the soil. When the stalks begin to wither, you know it's time for the first garlic harvests. The first bulbs pulled from soil have a strong, heavenly flavor ... too much for eating raw, unless you're really a person who likes strong flavors, but delicious roasted or lightly sauteed.
The difficulty with the bulbis, from what I understand, is that they take much longer to grow. My friend Ivan recommended planting them in a seed tray and eating the sprouts, which sounds quite appealing, and Ted Jordan, a dedicated seed saver who has apparently written the best book on garlic growing available, outlines an intricate method of propagating garlic from seed at the following site: http://garlicseed.blogspot.com/p/growing-garlic-from-true-seed.html. He advocates the start of true-seed garlic as a way of saving species and ensuring long-term planetary sustainability. While I support the goal, much of the method is beyond my comprehension.
Other gardening web sites suggest planting the bulbis as you would cloves. Cut the scapes when they form and then save what are called "rounds" (and look to be either clusters of small cloves or single cloves) for another round of planting in the fall. Like asparagus, garlic grown in this way is slower to yield results but considerably outpaces clove-grown garlic over time. The logic behind this approach is fairly obvious: one garlic bulb produces about four to eight cloves, each of which will produce a new bulb if planted and cared for properly. One flower, however, produces hundreds of bulbis, each of which will initially yield a clove and ultimately a bulb. So from one plant comes ultimately a couple hundred more.
The logic seems to work perfectly for crops like garlic, which one can never plant too much of.
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