Have you pulled your garlic out of the garden
yet? If not, put down the paper right now, and go harvest the
garlic you planted last fall!
Garlic needs to be harvested just before all
the leaves turn brown. You need to have some green left on the
plant, so the delicate covering on the new cloves will be thick
enough to assure long storage. If you have missed this window -
go ahead and dig out the garlic anyway. You will have to
sort
through to select those with strong skins to
save, and those with loose skins to use in the next few
weeks.
I'm starting this Garlic Primer at the end of
the cycle, because that's where we are today. Like the chicken
and the egg, it is hard to know which came
first - the clove we plant in the fall, or
the cluster we pick in August.
I like to write about garlic in August,
because this weekend (August 28) is when the annual Garlic
Festival takes place in downtown Sudbury. Take a walk down to
the corner of Elm and Notre Dame on Sunday, and you'll be
treated to music, dancing, delicious garlicky gourmet foods,
and opportunities
galore to learn about garlic. Best of all,
you will be able to buy fresh Ontario grown garlic and
preserves. Yum!
Last year at this time I wrote about the
special variety of garlic that I have been growing for the past
decade or more. Unlike the garlic you buy at the store, this
variety produces a "top set" of just 10 to 12 fat miniature
garlics. These will usually produce lovely large cloves in two
years. The "music" variety used by most growers in Ontario make
a "top set"' that has dozens of tiny clovelets, which take
sometimes five to ten years in the ground before they reach
their parent's stature.
Last year I offered to mail these to anyone
who wrote to me - this year I'm making them available at Durham
Health Foods on Montrose Ave. in Sudbury. Stop in to pick up a
cluster - and plant them in your garden at the end of
September.
For those of you who got some "top sets" to
plant last year, be sure to dig them up now, if you haven't
done so already. As you may recall, when they started to grow
in the spring, they looked just like sprouts of grass. Some of
the larger ones may have sent up their own top sets - which
means they also developed a set of small cloves in the ground.
I suggest you use these in soup - don't replant them.
Most of the little top sets planted last fall
will now be harvested as small round bulbs. Find as many as you
can by digging just a few centimetres from the surface. Chances
are good that you won't get them all, but that's OK. They'll be
happy where they are to grow into larger plants next summer.
The fat round bulbs you find could be eaten right away, or you
can replant them to get full heads of garlic next summer. Give
them at least eight inches between plants. Remember where you
put them, so you can find them again next year. If all goes
well, next August you will pull up fat heads of garlic, three
to four centimetres in diameter.
Viki Mather livea by a lake near Sudbury.
