Garlic (Catching up, again, and a call to arms!)

It is so hard to wait for scapes to come to us. Around the end of May, I start looking hard at the farmer's market, and for one glorious week sometime in June, scapes appear, are promptly bought up, and disappear until the following year. As we don't budget for purchasing enormous quantities of scapes in one go, it seems only prudent that we should grow our own. What's more, I think everyone would agree that eight varieties of garlic are always better than one. (Or at least six.) A brief trip to http://www.2sistersgarlic.com/, $60 later, and we are several pounds of garlic heavier.


We chose the following varieties:

Elephant garlic bulbils - 10
Hardneck sampler - 2 pounds (This was a grab-bag deal, and we were most pleasantly surprised with a half pound each of German Red, Italian purple, Music, and Fireball.)
Inchelium red - 1 pound

(The website has very detailed descriptions of each variety here: http://2sistersgarlic.com/varieties.htm)

The elephant garlic will be particularly fun, I think: you harvest very large bulbs ("rounds") the first year, which may then be replanted, yielding super gigantic heads of elephant garlic the following year. Two years of anticipation will make for mighty fine garlic that we will promptly give away because E scoffs at its mildness. (No appreciation for the subtler things in life, I guess.)

It appears our procrastination in planting the garlic is perfectly appropriate in this case: garlic doesn't get planted until late October or early November. We are right on time (to procrastinate another week or two). A few planting tips from the website:

• optimal pH 6-7
• No more than two days before planting, remove outer husk from garlic. Store separated cloves in a dark, cool place.
• Plant with pointed side of clove up, about 1-2" deep
  
• Mulch with 4-6" straw in the fall, then move straw between rows in the spring to allow free growth
• Space 3-5" within rows, and 18-24" between rows
• Fertilize with 1-2 lbs. of 10-10-10 per 100 sq ft. prior to planting. Blood, bone, and or fish meal may be used instead of commercial fertilizers.
• Fertilize again one month after planting. Use 1 lb. fertilizer for 100 sq ft., leaving 3-4 inches between fertilizer and plant.
  
• Water during dry weather in the spring until July.
• Harvest when the foliage begins to die back (July - August).
• Cure the garlic in a warm, dry, shady place for 2-3 weeks then remove foliage from 1" above the bulbs or use to braid.
  
• Store in a cool, dry, well-ventilated place.

Many sites recommend soaking garlic cloves prior to planting. It looks like an overnight soak in one gallon of water with 1 T baking soda and 1 T fish emulsion or seaweed extract, followed by a 10 minute dip in >140 proof alcohol is the way to go. This step is supposed to super-charge the clove by supplying extra nutrients that are presumably absorbed prior to killing all external contaminants with the alcohol soak. I am thinking we have enough garlic to try a soak/non-soak experiment.

And, in other exciting news (or, you know, just news), we have quite a few shallots sitting around that we harvested this fall. They didn't do much of anything, except produce a million small, poorly clustered cloves, so I think we'll try planting them again this fall and see if we get anything interesting next summer.