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hendi_alex
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This year's garlic crop

Three beds hold most of this year's garlic.

[img]https://farm5.static.flickr.com/4036/4432928147_8bce54b3a0_o.jpg[/img]

[img]https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2783/4433702130_68c0c2007e_o.jpg[/img]

[img]https://farm3.static.flickr.com/2702/4433701764_c3817d342d_o.jpg[/img]

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gixxerific
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That looks great Alex, I suppose they were planted last year.

I will be planting a bunch this spring mainly for companion planitng but hopefully to get some good bulbs out of them.

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hendi_alex
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Planted in September and October, which is supposed to be the best time for zone 8 planting.

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gixxerific
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I planted some last October, they were from the store.

I dug one up the other day and it had started to send up a shoot but I covered it all up with a bunch of compost. If they make it fine if not I will try again.

Looks like you will have garlic forever thought with that harvest. :D

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Wow, what a difference! Looks great! In addition to your great management of course :wink: I guess it's the longer head-start and milder weather (even with the extra snow you got this year). It's interesting that you get to plant them earlier Sept/Oct, when I'm supposed to plant them mid-late Oct so they'll grow roots but not much of top growth before going dormant for the winter. I suppose top growth will only get damaged in the more severe winter climate around here.

A few days ago, before the sky overflowed, I saw my garlic growing spindy 6" or so shoot or two under their mulch (some lost their mulch somehow, but I'm guessing the extended stay under the heavy snowcover served just as well).

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jal_ut
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That ain't fair. Mine are still covered with snow.

Looking good!

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hendi_alex
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Jal-ut, I think that the difference between our situations is that I'm like a marathoner (a very average one at that!) and you are like a sprinter. I nurture these plants along all winter long, and get an early spring planting for most everything else and with luck the garden turns out pretty well by mid summer. You on the other hand, seem to get the plants in the soil pretty late and they just take off, and by mid summer your garden is perhaps five times what mine is. I think you must have some great Utah dirt and that combined with more moderate temperatures and less disease helps contribute to your wonderful gardens. Wish that I could do half as well.

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Ozark Lady
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Alex, that is some gorgeous garlic.

Three beds? They look about 4x8'. That is alot of garlic!
Do you eat that much, or do you sell garlic?
Do you dry the garlic and grind it into powder or just store it until you want it?
I am so curious, because my garlic is sprouting,,, now. And I just can't hold it till fall. So, I am planting, in the off season.

I really, need to figure a way to have some to plant and some to ride out this period between planting and harvesting...without them all sprouting!

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hendi_alex
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I panted a mix of hard neck and soft neck varieties. The soft necks seem to be holding up quite a bit better as we continue to cook with last year's crop. The cloves are well past their prime but are still adequate for our purposes. Last year I harvested about 100 bulbs. That turned out to cover our needs for eating and to provide 120 or so cloves for the coming season.

I'm not sure how much garlic I'll plant in the future. I'm leaning toward about 200 plants. That will provide a nice number of extra bulbs for giving to family and friends. The appeciate our garden gifts so much, that the effort seems a small price for that exchange of sentiment.

I am having a problem in one area. During the winter, when those garlic cloves begin to sprout, I just can't stand tossing them into the compost pile. This year I gave a bunch to gardening friends. Also planted a couple dozen in 1 gallon nursery pots. Guess I'll do more of that next year. Maybe will give them to the annual church yard sale. Perhaps will plant a little extra and give them to the chef at our favorite Italian restaurant. Just gotta find homes for all of those little sprouts that could become full sized bulbs, with just a little care.

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That looks great. As soon as the snow melted I pulled the leaf mulch off of mine last week so the twisted yellow sprouts could see the light. They are starting to perk up. Next year I'll wait until the sprouts emerge before putting on the winter mulch.

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Nice! Way more than I have growing. =) I want to figure out some way to grow more garlic using containers only. Maybe a Rubbermaid tote?

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hendi_alex
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I'm considering the same thing and have been constructing some planters that should work well. I'm considering one foot by two or three foot planters just for ease of following a square foot recommendation of 4-9 garlic plants per square foot. I would opt for 4 per square foot for large bulbed varieties and probably six per square foot for smaller bulbed varieties. My planters will be between 12 inches and 17 inches deep. Right now I have garlic started in about 20 one gallon (just over one actual pint) nursery containers. Will post follow up with photos sharing how those plants develop. JFYI here is a square foot spacing guide that I ran across.

https://www.essene.com/Vegetarian/PlantSpacingsInASquareFootGarden.htm

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Beautiful garlic Alex. I only have one side of one bed planted in garlic. Like you, I planted mine last year. I think in late August or early Sept. It is about 18" tall and the necks on most plants at the ground are almost 1" thick. I was looking at the garlic today and wondering what I will do with all of it when I harvest it. We only use four or five bulbs per year in dishes we cook. I know I will give a lot of it away, but I think I will have a lot left over. I may plant in a container next fall and use the bed space for something we eat a lot of. How do you use all of your garlic?

Ted

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We almost exclusively prepare scratch meals, so we use quite a bit of garlic and herbs. We eat steamed spinach, steamed kale, and steamed collards pretty often. That aways starts with a good drizzle of olive oil and one or two cloves of garlic. We also eat lots of tomato based vegetable soup in the winter. Once again that always starts with a good drizzle of olive oil and a couple of cloves of garlic. We most often eat Italian style breads for evening meals, and yep you guessed it. The bread is lightly toasted with a little olive oil and then rubbed with fresh garlic before serving. In the warmer months we eat a lot, and I mean a lot, of fresh made salsa, and garlic is a key ingredient there as well. Most every evening meal consumes two or three small to medium cloves of garlic. I would guess that we eat between 50 and 60 bulbs per year. If you drive by our house in the country, you would probably recognize it by the garlic cloud that always hangs in the air.

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Ted, fry up a gorgeous steak, and just before it is done, put a whole head of garlic in the microwave, and nuke it until, you can tell that it is soft. You just squeeze it like you would a potato. I put microwave garlic in a zip lock bag, prior to nuking it, and don't quite seal it all the way to keep it from getting dry and tough.
Now, put your steak on your plate, and take your garlic with you, you just pull a small bud off and squeeze it on your steak in place of steak sauce. Sometimes, we even add a squeeze to our baked potato along with the sour cream.

You can also bake them in the oven, about an hour, and either way, they are wonderful, just squeezed out onto crackers.

When I cook garlic, I usually cook a full head per person, kids included! And this is in addition to recipes.

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Alex,

I can imagine that when I approach your neighborhood, I will detect an odor similar to Gilroy, California (The garlic capital of the U.S.). I've been through there during the off season and it still smells like a fresh garlic bulb you just smashed with a hammer. We also make the garlic toast with EVOO quite often and we eat a lot of steamed veggies. I've never thought of adding a garlic clove or two to the veggies while steaming. I'll try that.

OzarkLady,

We have eaten the baked garlic a few times. If I remember correctly, you slice the top of the bulb off before baking. I thought it was good but weighed against other veggies we bake regularly, I think we will eat the baked garlic only occasionally. It may be more often when I try it with some of my fresh garden garlic.

I have one tip for both of you. My wife and I searched for about two weeks last summer for the origin of a really gross odor that was permeating our house. It grew worse as each day passed. I finally started cleaning out a drawer under our kitchen counter and found a ziplock bag my wife had stored a few cloves of garlic in. She didn't want to throw it away and wasn't sure it would last long sitting on the counter. The tip is "do not store garlic in a sealed ziplock bag". You can't believe how bad it smells.

Ted

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Ozark Lady
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Did it smell as bad as a bad potato? That is the one that always gets my attention.. yuck!

I do not cut the garlic at all. Just wash it, and bag it up, then nuke it. We never use a partial head at all. Usually it is how many heads shall I add.

We serve a head of garlic like you would any other vegetable, it is part of the meal. But, it doesn't need anything added, no salt, butter, or anything. Occasionally it is simply a snack with crackers, and other snacks on the same plate.

Of course, for a day or two, your friends avoid you! No matter what you do, even your pores smell like garlic! It surely gets rid of colds quickly!
You can't wash the smell off because it is within you!

tedln
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Take the spoiled potato smell and multiply it by ten and you will be 1/2 of the way to the intensity of the garlic in ziplock smell.

Yes, I remember the body odor from eating the baked garlic. It also had another physiological effect on us that I won't mention on this forum.

I remember using the baked garlic almost like butter on different things. We eat a lot of artisan breads we buy at local bakeries. We like the really crusty breads with strong yeast or sour dough smells. I like to simply rip a piece of bread from the loaf and either eat it with a strong flavored cheese or smoked meat. I think spreading the baked garlic on that bread would be good. I also have a really large smoker where I smoke turkeys, pork shoulders, and other things. When I have it going, I usually stick some veggies from the garden in the smoker and smoke them as well. I wonder how the garlic would do on the smoker. I know it would turn out similar to the baked garlic, but it would also have a smoky flavor. Just a thought.

Ted

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You are making me HUNGRY! ...and it's breakfast time and I don't really think of garlic as breakfast food :lol: :wink:

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Ozark Lady
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I bet that smoky flavor would enhance the garlic.

I am braver than you... I will address the other issues with eating alot of garlic, particularly when you eat a head of it.

Your tears smell like garlic, you blow your nose, and the tissue in the trash can smells like garlic. If you have a bladder infection... it gets antibiotic properties to it. Your kidneys do not filter out the garlic aroma... I think everyone will follow that! Not real pleasant on day two, but I just look at it as natures antiviral, antibiotic, and figure I got a good cleaning, everywhere! I have not had a bladder infection, since I started eating an occassional head of garlic.

Have you ever tried chopping raw garlic into a salad? Man it is hot, I mean like a hot pepper. I quickly understood why folks rub the bowl, immerse in oil or only used it cooked... Hot is an understatement. And yet the heat is all gone once it is cooked.

I make my version of duchess potatoes, I boil the potatoes, and nuke the garlic, then I peel the garlic, and mash it in with the potatoes, then as I am almost done with the potatoes, I add Velveeta, and turn them a golden color, and simply mix it all well, of course along with the salt, pepper, butter and milk. This is a hit at our house!

Folks, seriously, that garlic patch is like a medical insurance policy. Just look up all the properties of garlic. It was once called "Russian pennicillin, when they ran out of medicines and used it in war wounds, and it worked!" And unlike commercial medications, viruses and bacteria can not develop immunity to it. So, it is food, and medicine all at the same time.

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I think most of the problem I have with fresh garlic is the fact that "Elephant" garlic is the only variety sold in many grocery stores. I like strong flavors and tastes and the Elephant garlic simply leaves me unsatisfied. I am growing elephant garlic in my garden in the hope that truly fresh bulbs will have a more satisfactory taste. If it doesn't, I think I will look for another variety to grow.

We use a lot of garlic in our dishes, but I have found that dried garlic seems to provide a better garlic taste than store bought elephant garlic. I do believe the garden fresh elephant garlic will do well baked or smoked. If stem size is an indicator of bulb size, I am going to have some huge bulbs to cook.

(you still haven't mentioned the physiological effect that whole baked garlic bulbs have on our intestinal tracts)

Ted

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Ozark Lady
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Ted, I mentioned the only effects that I know of. Good health, and lots of odor, plus a wonderful flavor!

How does garlic do in a flower pot? Can you also use the greens like chives?
I have garlic chives, they look pretty, but I have never found a use for them. They are simply bug inhibitors in my garden, and they are great about being perennial.

Does anyone know if there is a perennial garlic, with like topsets like the egyptian onions? They are the same family, wonder if you can cross them?

I have never tried elephant garlic, I was impressed with the size, until everyone told me, that they are bland. So, I grow just regular little bulbs.

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For my first attempt at growing garlic, I chose the wrong varieties for this warm climate and the plants would not mature to any reasonable size. During that first try however, I also grew some elephant garlic. It was extremely easy to grow here in sandy zone eight and the bulbs would sometimes get as large as a baseball. Since we started eating regular garlic, the bland flavor of elephant garlic just was not satisfactory and I quit growing the plants about five years ago. Elephant garlic is really a variety of leek and is not a true garlic. To me the flavor of the elephant garlic is really closer to that of a leek as well.

I find the comment of the above post to be a bit odd (at least compared to my experience) as elephant garlic is only occassionally available in the big chain grocery stores in our area. Most of the time their garlic appears to be similar to California white or other similar commercial variety.

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Ozark Lady
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I was not even aware that garlics are climate oriented!

I thought all garlic were simply cool weather crops, or translated to over wintering crops unless you live where it is cool.

Can you give us an idea of what garlics grow well in warmer climates?

I have only grown the small bulbs available at the grocery store, apparently it was hard neck? But, I braided them anyhow! ha ha.

And my garlic does grow to seeds and I planted some of my homegrown garlic seedlings, hoping they would acclimate to here and get bigger, hardier and better.

I think that I really truly need an unbiased comparison of garlics, you just can't get that from garlic vendors, since they have a product to sell.

Since you have 3 beds of garlic, you get appointed garlic guru, Alex.

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tn_veggie_gardner
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Any chance I can get you to send me some garlic? :) I'd be happy to mail a SASBE.

- Steve

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[quote="Ozark Lady"]Ted, I mentioned the only effects that I know of. Good health, and lots of odor, plus a wonderful flavor!

You didn't mention Montezuma's revenge. :shock:

Ted

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Ozark Lady
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I had to google, what is Montezuma's Revenge. I warned you, sometimes I am very dipsy.. I should have known what that was... but I didn't.

Wow, never had that reaction to garlic!

Maybe it was what you ate with the garlic?

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I bought all of my stock from thegarlicstore.com which sells only certified organic garlic. I bought two of their sampler packs and planted 12 different varieties of garlic that were best suited for mild climates. The site looks pretty boring right now as they seem to be in the middle of a site upgrade. But this is a top flight business. I've ordered two years now and have been very pleased with the size and condition of the bulbs. The sampler packs contain either four or six bulbs of different varieties. I ordered one six pack of soft necks and one six pack of hard necks, both selected for mild winter growing areas. Those 12 bulbs gave me enough cloves to yield about 100 mature bulbs when harvested. The garlic store also sells named varieties in half pound packs to stock the pantry. Their garlic is pretty expensive, but IMO well worth buying the sampler packs basically as a one time expense.

Here is a link to the sampler packs at their site. They will not begin accepting advanced orders until some time in June.
https://www.thegarlicstore.com/categories/Planting-Stock/Sampler-Packs/

The site also has lots of valuable information available from their home page.
https://www.thegarlicstore.com/

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Ozark Lady
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Nice site.

Okay, terminology got me. They are talking about a scape and whether or not to remove it. Apparently on some you do.

Is a scape the flower?

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Steve, I've got quite a bit of garlic left from last season. Most all of the cloves are sprouting. At this point I doubt that they would give you much for bulbs this year, but if you are patient, you could plant them this year, harvest when the tops start to die back, store the bulbs and then replant them in September-November and they should give good sized bulbs for the next season. Email me your address if you want some of these sprouting cloves.

hend1009@gmail.com

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Ozark Lady
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Alex, I planted some from last year, that were sprouting, they are coming up well.
If they should make small bulbs this spring, when I get ready to replant them this fall, would I still separate them, or just plant it whole?

I also planted some of the tiny little bulbil seeds, they are really small, will I just plant them whole in the fall?

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Alex,

The elephant garlic is about all I see in our big chain groceries. I've even asked the produce manager where they display their garlic bulbs and they point me to the elephant garlic. I do shop some local Mexican groceries because they usually have a better fresh meat and vegetable selection than the chains. They also have garlic bulbs which are about 1/2 size of the elephant garlic. I don't know the variety, but they have a purple neck and have an excellent garlic flavor. My problem is the fact that we only make the special trip to the Mexican grocery a couple of times per year. Their fresh veggies are much better and much cheaper. Last winter, I was buying yellow squash at the chains for $1.69 per lb. This year, it was $2.59 per lb. at the chains and only $1.69 at the Mexican markets. They also sell limes for 15 for $1.00. Great buys.

At the current price of yellow squash, I figure we will grow about $400.00 worth for $2,00 worth of seed.

Ted

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tn_veggie_gardner
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Alex: Sent you an e-mail. Thank you for your kind offer. =)

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About the effects on the digestive system...

I don't remember personally eating a quantity of garlic enough to have problems, but it's a by-product of the excellent anti-bacterial anti-fungal action of the garlic. You've wiped out your gastro-intestinal flora and fauna. Same as what can happen from taking antibiotics.

I suspect stronger reaction from raw garlic than cooked until creamy garlic like Ozark Lady describes. It's also a matter of acclimating your system and promoting resistant strains. In other words, start out with smaller amounts of garlic, then increase gradually.

If this happens to you, lay off the garlic and eat lacto-fermented foods like yogurt, sour cream, cottage cheese, home made type sauerkraut and barrel pickles, miso, kimchee, etc. to re-establish your system. Eat whole grain and oatmeal to provide the fiber to sustain them.

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Alex, your garlic is beautiful! How deep are your beds and what is your most used mulch? Fish emulsion foliar spray?
My 12" deep bed, with 20 or so varieties, is now popping sunwards thru 4-6" of straw mulch. I will begin soil drenching with rinse water from wheat kernals tomorrow and at the end of the month will start foliar feeding.

Am experimenting this year with some of the giant softnecks (Kettle River and Applegate) from WA and hope they will survive/produce so I can maintain them many years. These are so easy for my arthritic fingers to prepare without blanching.

This year, I soaked most of the 'seed cloves' in a dilute solution of fish emulsion, peeled the cloves and then rinsed them in vodka before planting. It was a surprise to find that many cloves that had appeared single, were actually doubles. In a few weeks, I will check for % of growth as I did not get them planted until Dec 1.

What varieties do you grow?

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Here is an excerpt from a post last season.
"This year I planted Morado Gigante, Tuscan, Bogatyr, Asian Tempest, Metechi, Xian*, Purple Glazer, Susanville*, Early Red*, Polish White, Silver Rose*, Silver White and CA early. Next year I'm adding Corsican Red and Simonetti to the crop."

My beds are about 8 inches deep, for my first crop the beds were only about 5 inches deep. The garlic did better in those shallow beds over concrete than they did in the enriched area directly in the ground.

I don't give my garlic much attention and don't mulch. Before planting cloves, the soil is enriched with organic fertilizer mix consisting of cotton seed meal, bone meal, blood meal, kelp meal, and lime. Nothing else is added until harvest around mid June when about half of the top growth has turned brown.

This is my first bulb from last year.
[img]https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3340/3555310834_d66826e9ed_o.jpg[/img]

This is the full harvest of one of my favorites, 'Xian' which has very large cloves.
[img]https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3609/3569426079_75c4467ea4_o.jpg[/img]

This is about 1/5 of the harvest after drying and cleaning.
[img]https://farm4.static.flickr.com/3622/3611639636_04104f8907_o.jpg[/img]

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Ozark Lady
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Some very nice garlic, alot larger than the ones that I grew.

I am not talking elephant garlic, but the other larger garlics, do they have the same flavor as the littler ones?

I have never seen garlic with red on it, does it taste any different?

I look at all the garlic names and have no clue what is a what.

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hendi_alex
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Personally I think that variation in garlic flavors is a lot like olive oil. If you taste a small amount of various olive oils the flavor distinction is obvious, sometimes floral, sometimes tart, somtimes with a bite. But when the olive oil is put to most any use, those flavor distinctions disappear to my palate. That is why I only use expensive oil for very basic things like drizzling on a salad or for dipping bread.

I'm sure that the garlic varieties also have very distinct differences, especially in degree of heat when eaten raw or when eating by itself roasted or as a spread. But when cooked in varous soups, sauces, and entres I never noticed any distinction between one variety and the other. So my preference for the home garden, if limited to just a couple of varieties, would be softnecks I(because they store longer) that form relatively large cloves which are easy to use in meal preparation.

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Ozark Lady
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I hear ya on meal preparation.

I get my cutting board out, smash the garlic clove with the side of the knife until it splits the skin. But, still my fingers quickly get sticky and the skins stick to me, and it becomes an issue to peel out the garlic.

Larger cloves from larger heads are definitely faster to process! Whether eating them or cooking with them.

I thought it was just me, because folks talk about garlic tasting different and I thought, my taste buds must be failing, because garlic tastes like garlic to me. But, I can't tell wines, or olive oils apart either.

To me all wine is bitter and alchol tasting, not good. I even took a wine class and they all taste the same. Blindfolded they are all bitter, and alcohol. I failed the tasting, and aroma part of that class, I just couldn't tell one wine from another, unless I looked at it. Only visually could I pick one wine from another, I could then tell, red, white, or burgundy, ha ha.

We all have different tastebuds, and our palates are trained or not trained.

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hendi_alex
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I'm pretty good at wine tasting. Can always tell a Reistling from a Cab, even when not looking!

Seriously, I love wine and its infinite variety, with both subtle and not so subtle differences from one type or label to next. Which reminds me, it is time for a $400 wine run to stock up for the next couple of months. I really hate to hear that the Asians are developing a taste for wine. That could serious affect prices and availability in the coming years.



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