(That's not the counter. I took them outside for good natural light.)
Here's some of the as-yet-unharvested garlic:
Although Meade has grown garlic commercially at other times, in other places, this garlic was planted only because Meade bought a whole lot of harvested garlic from some vendor at the Dane County Farmers' Market, and when he got it home, he discovered it hadn't been properly dried and considered it unfit for eating. So he planted the garlic bulbs, which are in the genus Allium, in a row behind the flowering alliums.
You saw Meade planting the smallest of the flowering alliums in this video last fall. (The day after Election Day. Included in the video is a shot of a political sign in the neighbors' yard for the lefty candidate who was more left than the lefty candidate who won.*) And here's a picture of what the 2 taller types of allium looked like flowering in May.
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*Brett Hulsey.
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18 comments:
You could call it the Walker garlic.
Or the We'll Spend A Lot Of Time At The Capitol Before We Harvest This garlic.
Or the Bye Bye Blogger garlic.
Or something.
Mmmmm. Baked and spread on a tasty cracker. Mmmm.
I hope this isn't in your front yard!
This is the first step in turning the Althouse into one of those self-sufficient hippie communes.
Wont your carbon-footprint be small!
Ann -- Tell Meade that to get good sized garlic bulbs he has to cut the seed pod off the top (that's the curly garlic scape with the whitish seed pod on the end -- the scapes are also good for cooking in stir fries etc so you're not wasting anything.)
Leaving the pods on diminishes the size of the bulb underneath the ground.
Tim W.
Additional note -- there's a really good synopsis on garlic growing at Johnny's seed catalog (Maine).
Also, I don't understand why the garlic hadn't been properly dried. I love garlic fresh from the ground, still wet and juicy and it goes right into the pan with the olive oil -- talk about a wonderful smell!
Love your blog -- wish we had someone like you covering state government in New York.
TW
@Tim Meade says it makes so little difference, it's not worth the time or effort, plus he likes the way the "bulbiles" look and he wanted them to develop to the point where they are useful for further planting.
"Also, I don't understand why the garlic hadn't been properly dried. I love garlic fresh from the ground, still wet and juicy and it goes right into the pan with the olive oil -- talk about a wonderful smell!"
This wasn't the situation. The vendor presented them as properly cured and ready to be stored. They were "sunburned" and damaged.
You can eat them right out of the ground, but they have more water, and the properly cured ones will have more flavor.
I'll bet the neighborhood smells like Gilroy.
ndspinelli said...
I'll bet the neighborhood smells like Gilroy.
huumm.. Garlic Ice Cream...
eating the garlic like they are green onions is also good :)
Very nice! I could sure use the advice and guidance of someone like Meade in getting my garden into the ground. So far I still have plans for raised beds, but I didn't build them in May because it was still too cold here, and I didn't get around to building them in June. Now it's the second week of July and probably too late to do anything about it.
Piffle. Try West Virginia ramps sometime
It's really uncanny what garlic can do for the simplest meal. I had a spinach omelet for breakfast in Luna's Restaurant in East Glacier Park, Montana, recently and I'm still marveling at it. Spinach, cheese and garlic and it was the garlic that gave it the most wonderful lingering flavor. Beat sex going away.
Here's a good green garlic recipe. I look forward to the first garlic and arugula harvest each summer just to be able to have this.
Just read Dracula this week while on vacation. It's a bit tedious and, but I'm glad I read it as it gives me context for some references I'd seen before but never knew where they came from.
A man who knows how to re-plant garlic, and nourish it to ripeness, will be a valuable friend to have in the coming vampire apocalypse.
I never had any luck growing garlic from the seeds in the pod. But then I planted those seeds in the following spring. Maybe if I had tried planting them in the fall, when I plant the rest of my garlic bulbs, it might have worked better.
I'm curious how Meade cures his garlic? I've been putting mine in a wide aired porch out of direct sunlight.
Tim
Fresh garlic is quite tasty. You can cut up lots of the green part too. I like it in pasta with good virgin oil. But it can give you garlic breath. It is more stinky that way than traditional garlic bulbs. I am not sure why.
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