Skip to main content

For the love of garlic



Between July and August I have one of the happiest moments of all in my gardening life: harvesting garlic. The beautiful plants are now less vigorous and clearly signalling hidden gems await buried under the soil.

Hands down, garlic is my single most beloved crop. I love to cook with it, I love its shape, the colours, the smell, the taste. I love planting it, I love seeing it poke through the soil as one of the earliest signs of life in spring. It is a beautiful once it is stored somewhere, be it braided, in baskets, wherever. I mean, just google it and see for yourself!

Be used to just have some of your garlic lying around and ready to cook!

My first garlic attempt was on fall 2017 and I had built a brand new raised bed, 2 feet in height, and garlic was the plant to open the season on that bed, being planted in late October. I planted a shy amount or Wrenglers Russian and Inchellium Red, from Boundary Garlic Farm. They are extremely specialized offering a great variety, and their product is of a fantastic quality! I buy with them ever since. Another place I like to order from is from the Greater Montreal Area, Ferme Tournesol. Not only because it is another organic farm, but it is another Canadian organic farm. It is a Zone 5 farm. It is a Quebec Zone 5 farm! Very similar growing habits for the plants and seeds. This is especially important when we want to grow garlic that is as sizable as the ones we planted.


For the most part, I recommend planting garlic for any beginner gardener. It is an almost "plant-and-forget". It stays in the soil doing its "thing". You do not have to water it too much, as it stays in the deeper parts of the soil, where moisture penetrates and stays put. It is almost pest free. The sulphuric content makes other critters shy away, at least for the most part. Once it comes out, the only thing it wants is sun. And to be very honest, if it lies on a part-sun spot it will not complain, it will just developer slower or put out smaller bulbs. If size is not your worry, garlic can be put in any little corner of your garden, including those perennial beds, where it will help repel a lot of insect and even bunnies and hares. Also, having a long season that will end for the most part in August reveals a great gardening gift when planted in dedicated beds: the beds will now be totally free for any fall crop that can grow in about 2 months and with the added garlic juices  on the soil, the next planting will grow undisturbed by flea beetles, earwigs or slugs. And there are many such crops that can take over now!

But I digress. For now, August, just start browsing seed catalogs or go to your favourite fresh market or garlic festival to start ordering your next batch of this amazing culinary plant. If you are around the city of Montreal, you should definitely make your way to the Saint Anne de Bellevue Garlic fest! That is what I will be doing!


Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Waiting for Spring - In Memoriam of Pierre

 his was not a cold winter, but it wad definitely a snowy one. I am happy that starting in January my garden could rest beautifully protected by the a thick carpet of snow. It took a while, but the s now came. Snow is the healthy insulation that protects northern gardens from the damaging winds and harsh temperatures of winter. I celebrate snow.       2020 was a bountiful year and we were able to preserve a lot of food. As of today we still have stored, canned, dehydrated or frozen: peppers, tomatoes, pumpkin, onion, greens, pesto, green beans, cucumbers. Basically I need to tweak just a few items to have the perfect pantry. I need more carrots, beets and potatoes (it is NEVER enough) and I want to start celleri and corn because... why not? And I garden in just 329 square feet of raised beds and pot! Anyone can have a beautiful harvest.   I guess I can say in five years I learned what we need and how much to plant. That is probably the best lesson you can take f...
Post a Comment
Read more

Final summer harvest

September 2020 experienced 3 days of frost! That really does signal fall, together with those lovely days of sunny 14 degrees and a cold wind that can chill our hearts. The inevitable conclusion is to start closing for summer crops, because choices have to be made and I am so bad at that. I should have cut my bean plants much earlier to give some carrots more light and space, but the plants were so vigorous! I cannot just kill them... Hopefully the hidden carrots will pick up fast It took me a full day to go around the garden to harvest and remove plants, pile them in the compost. And I am glad I did it since the very next day, a new frost advisory came and it was a true frost, as per crystal tips on top of o my brussels sprouts. It never gets old to take a stroll into my yard and come back with fresh produce! A great summer mix to eat fresh!   The front yard is now the spot that receives most hours of sunlight and unsurprisingly the production continues. Fall crops are in full p...
Post a Comment
Read more

2020 - A great year for potato

I have been growing potatoes for 3 years now and 2020 was just off the charts with production. These boxes of potato were 1/4th of what we harvested this year: Kennebec, French fingerling and Lindtzer. Delicious, home-bred potatoes!   As usual I sourced a lot of different breeds of potatoes from Eagle Creek Farm . They have a ridiculously wide selection and you are just spoiled for choice. As I am learning, I keep ordering different types, but I can confidently say I have a few favorites.  The packages with the precious load in them! Kennebec stores well and tastes great. It also yields me huge tubers. Kennebec and Norland give me the best yield, one seed potato being able to produce sometimes 10 tubers on its own. But Norland does not store well, so it is a delight to eat and in 3 months it is trying to sprout everywhere in your kitchen and pantry! Better eat it fresh. In second place comes the fingerlings. Fingerling potatoes are usually waxy, a great type for salads, soups ...
Post a Comment
Read more