July 4 = Garlic Harvest
Our garlic cures in the well house. The symbol was painted long before we arrived. No one has been able to confirm what it means, but it bares a resemblance to symbols for water and fertility.
Gardening is all about delayed gratification. Germinate a seed or transplant a start, then water, weed and wait, wait, wait. Tomato plants can take up to 90 days to produce fruit. Leafy greens tend to be faster, sending out edible leaves within 20-to-30 days. Garlic requires more patience. Seed cloves are planted in the fall, usually October, and new bulbs are harvested the following summer—a good ten months later.
You can use just about any plump clove as seed garlic, but we like to get ours from the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival, held each fall by the Kiwanis Club of Saugerties. I like to wander from table to table, asking each vendor who’s willing to chat what makes their garlic the tastiest and most productive. Some folks can be really passionate about their garlic, and those are the ones I buy from. I figure if it was grown with love and pride, it’s got to be good.
There must be something in that, because our harvest this year was outstanding! Some people are very fussy about tending their garlic plants—feeding, then watering, then withholding water at just the right intervals to ensure the biggest, fleshiest bulbs. I’m a bit more hands off. I plant in October, weed in the spring, and cut back the scapes when they emerge in early summer. That’s it.
Scapes are the flowering shoot of a garlic plant. If you cut them back, the plant directs all its energy into the bulb rather than making a flower to reproduce by seed. Bulbs are basically little root cellars, used by the plant to store food for the winter. The same process is used by other bulbs, like spring flowering daffodils and tulips, as well as tubers, like potatoes and dahlias. The plant sends up bountiful shoots and leaves in the summer so it can photosynthesize like mad, then it stores the excess carbohydrates it produces in the bulb or tuber, so that when the shoots and leaves die off in cold weather, the plant has a chance of surviving until spring. Of course, some tubers, like dahlias, can’t handle the intense cold of the Northeast and will turn to mush in a hard freeze, but some bulbs, like daffodils and tulips, actually require a freeze to activate new growth in the spring.
Garlic scapes don’t go to waste! They are delicious, with a pungent flavor similar to the bulbs themselves. Some people swear by garlic scape pesto, but that can be time consuming to make. I just chop up the scapes, give them a slow sizzle in some olive oil, so the oil is infused with flavor but the scapes don’t burn, then toss with anything from scrambled eggs to rice to spinach. You can also add a squeeze of lemon and some salt for a yummy salad dressing.
The garlic plants let you know they’re ready for harvest when most of the leaves wither and turn brown. That’s usually around the Fourth of July. It’s easiest to pull the bulbs when the soil is dry. Just shimmy the stalk a bit, give it a tug and prepare to be amazed by the beautiful, voluptuous bulb that emerges from the soil. All that’s left is to tie the plants into bundles and let them cure for a few weeks. We use our well house. After they’re cured, cut the stems back and store the bulbs in a cool dry place, and they’ll generally keep until February.
So… remember to pick up some seed garlic this fall and push those cloves about an inch into the ground before it freezes. This time next year, you’ll be reaping your own garlic harvest. Happy growing!