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Thursday, September 24, 2009

GARLIC!

I love garlic!

I love garlic almost as much as I love chocolate or nutella,
or fresh crusty bread, or my Mom's artichoke omelettes.

I said almost.

Loving garlic more than chocolate, well that's just crazy talk.

But I do love it. In fact I love garlic so much that when John and I were first starting off in our relationship,
one of the first food related questions I asked him was "do you like garlic?".

Luckily his answer was yes, cause if it was no,
I'm not quite sure what I would have done.

A life that would hamper my love of garlic? I can't imagine it. I guess I was pretty lucky he was a garlic lover.

This year I ordered a garlic sampler from
Gourmet Garlic Gardens. I found them through a fantastic gardening blog called Chiots Run.

I choose the medium flavor assortment. Here's what I got:

Persian Star - This smelled so good I wanted to chop up a clove and start cooking immediately.

Garlic Persian Star

Music
- the biggest and baddest of them all. The cloves were huge!

Garlic Music

Chesnok Red - this was so pretty it was kinda of a shame to cover it up with dirt.

Garlic Chesnok Red

Purple Italian Rocambole - hey it's Italian, so it's gotta be good.

Garlic Purple Italian Rocambole

The folks at Gourmet Garlic Gardens really know their stuff.

They mail you the garlic when it's time to plant it in your area.

You get 2 pages of instructions - 1 to explain how to plant the garlic, and 1 that explains how to harvest when it's time.

First the garlic gets a soak overnite in a baking soda/water mixture.

This looses up the skins.

Garlic in jars

Then you soak them for 3 - 5 minutes in rubbing alcohol
right before they go in the ground.

The alcohol kills pests and any eggs or pathogens the first soaking missed. Then you are ready to plant.

Here in RI I was instructed to plant the cloves 4 inches deep and 6 inches apart.

Garlic planting

Mitch was my garlic planting helper for the day.

I told him that I would be sure to let all my blog readers know that
the hands you see here are Mitchells.

Please not how soft and subtle they look and how perfectly manicured they are. Mine were caked with dirt. I'm just sayin'.

Garlic planting 1

Once all those little cloves of goodness were in the ground,
we mulched them with leaves and grass clipping,
which gave Mr. Softy Hands the sniffles (sorry Mitchyboy!).

Garlic Planting 2

The only bad part of growing your own garlic....the waiting!
These beauties will be harvested from June till early Fall.

That leaves me a lot of time to find the best garlic recipes.

Pssst...more apple recipes coming up!

7 comments:

  1. Nice variety of garlic and great step-by-step photos

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  2. Oh, I can't wait to see what bounty you unearth next year! Even more, I can't wait to see what you do with it.

    And you're right, Lisa: loving garlic more than chocolate, loving anything more than chocolate. That's just crazy talk.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Now I wish I had some garlic to plant. I like the Persian Star the best on pure aesthetics.

    And can I just say they look like funny little tadpoles in the jar.

    Mmmm. Garlic.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Now I wish I had some garlic to plant. I like the Persian Star the best on pure aesthetics.

    And can I just say they look like funny little tadpoles in the jar.

    Mmmm. Garlic.

    ReplyDelete
  5. I order garlic every year from a garlic farm in WI and I love it.

    This year I ordered enough to plant some of my own. I've grown garlic but I know more about growing garlic now so am hoping I have better luck with HUGE cloves.

    ReplyDelete
  6. So my hands are soft and supple, but they are of a MANLY soft and supple variety! Also, you do know that I raided your hand moisturizer collection after these pics were taken, right? Hey, a man's gotta moisturize after diggin' in the dirt, damnit!!

    ReplyDelete
  7. That Columbine is lovely. I only have the wild purple ones that self seed around here.

    Love the photos!

    ReplyDelete