I’ve been pretty excited about my garlic. This is the second year I’ve grown garlic and the first year was such a thumping success that it filled my sails for a long time. I’m not much of a farmer. Even the things I do grow successfully don’t necessarily get harvested. I just watched a splendid two rows of rambunctious lettuce grow and thrive and then bolt, and I cheered it on and subtracted maybe one salad from it.
But sometimes things work. The first broccoli year was a revelation. Broccoli the size of soccer balls busted out of those plants in a matter of days. This, I thought, makes up for that sorry tomato situation. My tomatoes often have a soggy bottom.
Anyway the garlic lasted me most of the winter that first year. The heads were enormous. I’d started with two large expensive fancy heads to divide and they came through. From now on, they’re free.
I do know how to grow things. That is because I have a browser and know how to type. So I looked up when to harvest garlic. And that would be about three weeks after you pick the scapes (I didn’t pick the scapes) and if you don’t pick the scapes (I didn’t) you wait until they are pointing straight up. They start out gracefully curved under like a shepherd’s crook. Problem was, I was going to be gone for a while, and I didn’t want to miss my garlic window. I looked every day, and the scapes were unfurling and starting to point up. Most of them. Just in time! About 3/4 of them were pointing straight up and the remainder were at least a little aroused.
I could have asked a neighbor to harvest the rest of the garlic for me in a few days, but one hesitates. I already have them promising to water stuff, and I’m kind of a pain in the ass about it. Not “Could you make sure my pots and flower boxes get water?” but “The hose works best on the soaker setting but it’s really important to not drag the hose through the salamander topiary in the front yard and maybe you should just fill up the watering can and make lots of trips. Also, I use those hoses that act like a scrotum and you need to make sure you’ve drained the water out of them so they don’t blow up.” Nobody needs all that noise for a simple favor.
On the other hand, I don’t see anyone objecting to picking my raspberries and blueberries. They get to keep them, of course. Still, it’s different to explain the steps (according to the internet) about the garlic harvest. That starts to feel like homework.
So I pulled the rest of the garlic. My goodness. I have 27 heads of garlic!
According to the internets, you fumble around in the loose soil to check the progress. You make sure they have nice shoulders. I like that they call the top end of the garlic “shoulders.” It’s evocative. But the metaphor breaks down fast. They’re “shoulders” because they come just under the “neck” but what is below that? The head. And below that? The hair. Well, roots. THIS PLANT IS RIGHT-SIDE UP AND UPSIDE-DOWN AT THE SAME TIME.
Now I’m confused about exactly what to call the pertinent parts of the garlic, but it all became clear in the next step. You pull up your garlic. You dust the dirt off of it. And then you “pull the lowest green leaf” down all the way off like panty hose to reveal a shiny, clean bulb. Pulling the lowest green leaf down is a euphemism. I’m pantsing them.
That’s no head. That’s a shiny white butt! That’s a fine fat ass with multiple cleavages, and now even the hair underneath makes sense.
But hey! Some of my garlic might be a little premature, but it’s another success! Which is more than I can say about the broccoli, planted in the same bed. For the last two years the broccoli has been scandalous. It’s buggy and small and yellow, and those are the good plants. The others are too dismal to even bother flowering.
I’m only glad that the garlic has its head in the sand so it doesn’t get discouraged by the broccoli. True, new research indicates plants chat with each other constantly, send out flares, go all Paul Revere on each other, but I suspect the garlic is willfully ignoring the whole scene. “I’m going to get a fat head,” my garlic says to my broccoli. “You do you.”
I was told that selective breeding has reduced the stinky compounds in broccoli so that we can enjoy it better. And roasting a chicken with 40 cloves (not 40 heads, as my sister did) is really quite delicious!
Do you knife the chicken and stick he cloves into the slits or just put them into the pan with the chicken? What did a chicken with 40 heads of garlic taste like?
There are stinky compounds in broccoli? I love broccoli. I think I always have. Bananas, on the other hand, have become horrible.
Oh my–I thought I was weird. Roast broccoli is sweeter to me than chocolate! And bananas are no longer welcome in my daily diet. Then again, most things aren’t welcome in my daily diet any longer.
The garlic would NOT last an entire winter with me. I use it a lot, and when I use it, I use twice as much as the recipe calls for.
I especially like to roast cut up vegetables (eggplant, zucchini, bell peppers, plum tomatoes) with lots of minced garlic, salt, pepper, and olive oil. A roasted vegetable ratatouille, as it were. It’s good on its own as a side dish; or mixed with pearled couscous, feta cheese, and a dash of Vietnamese fish sauce for a meal. Or over leftover polenta, or mixed with pasta. Inside an omelet. It’s very versatile and the vegetables keep longer when they are roasted as opposed to being out of sight, out of mind in the “crisper” drawer. (A misnomer if there ever was one.)
What’s “leftover polenta?”
I can’t imagine growing anything when I live a block from the market, but this was still impressive. And you made that raw garlic sound all sexy and stuff too. 🤭 I have to say, I was baking chicken tenders last week and accidentally quadrupled the garlic in the coating, and man those tenders were so good!
I pay almost no attention to the amount of garlic in a recipe. The cloves and heads are all different sizes anyway. I just put in a lot.
Agree with anybody who doesn’t understand what “too much garlic” means. We have a pizza joint in town that offers a garlic pizza that has at LEAST one head (not clove) baked right in. Not minced. Probably five. It actually scorches your throat. It’s WONDERFUL.
When I was about 25 I was told that swallowing raw garlic would dry up the runny nose of a cold. I did it, and my nose dried up, my throat dried up — I’m surprised my eyelids didn’t start scraping my corneas when I blinked. Then I found out that in Stalin’s GULAG, a prisoner who wanted to fake sick would use a clove as a suppository and that would duplicate all the symptoms of typhus. Very biologically active, that stuff! And I love it.
Now I kind of want to stick some garlic up my butt, just to see. Kind of. Just a matter of curiosity.
Can’t be any worse than what’s already in there, you know.
You know the symptoms of typhus, right?
My garlic story from the late 60’s was to rub a lot of raw garlic on the soles of your feet before going to a concert. By the time you got into the crowd the garlic smell had subtly permeated your body so that people would be inclined to subconsciously give you space as you moved to the front of the crowd. Never tried it – just heard the boastful stories of friends.
That sounds like an old chive’s tale.