Podcast Episode 2: Garlic
Join Jacque and Laura as they chat about all things garlic! Come learn about the different types of garlic, how to grow garlic, and how to store garlic so you never have to buy it again.
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Hey! Hey. So fun. I’m so excited to talk about some really fun topics today. Yeah, this will be fun. I know. I’d love to start by talking about garlic, all things garlic, because as you know, Laura, one of my favorite foods on the planet is garlic. I am a garlic ahol…. What do you call that like, when you love garlic a ton. I want to say garlic phobia. But that’s exactly like aholic, thank you. I’m a garlicaholic when a recipe says hey, chop up two things…two cloves of garlic, I’m like, put in six or eight, like doubling or tripling the garlic in my recipes, because it’s my favorite one of my favorite flavor profiles. And I know it is for you too. It’s it’s one of our absolute favorites.
And I know when a couple of years ago, I was at your house one day, and you had told me you were like, you were in this really cool space, right? You were like really trying to practice like, like creating one meal per week of all the foods that you had produced in your own garden, to like, create a sustainable meal once a week. And I was like, that is so inspiring.
As we were talking about that, you told me that the first meal, the first food that you ever became fully sustainable in was garlic. And I was like what? Because in my mind at that time, garlic was this really abstract thing to grow. I didn’t know anything about it. And then you then you explained it to me. And all of a sudden I was like, I can see why you were sustainable with that one first. Yeah, super cool to hear about your story with the garlic. And then how you actually do the sustainability thing? Or how even just to grow garlic how you plant it.
Sustainability
Okay, cool. Yeah, so it was the one of the first things that I had, what I mean by sustainable is that I was able to grow enough garlic, that I didn’t have to purchase any, any garlic at the grocery store for an entire year. And my stored garlic lasted until my next harvest. That’s what I mean by sustainable. So I was able to grow an entire year’s supply of garlic of what we were using. So that was super cool.
I think the two that I was the most sustainable on was garlic and pickles. So I had a bumper crop of cucumbers, and I had stored enough cucumbers and pickles, that I didn’t have to buy any of them at the store. That’s a really cool feeling to me to be able to like I have enough of this, that I don’t need to buy anything at the grocery store. Super fun. So that’s kind of what’s inspiring to me is to work toward goals like that in our gardening efforts to be more self sufficient. And that is what we’re really passionate about is self sufficiency and working toward that and be able to, to know how to do that better in our life.
Yeah, so I started growing garlic, many, many years ago. And at first I was just learning how the process went and what worked and what didn’t, right? And then I gradually built and then I one year, I planted a whole bunch of garlic, and it lasted almost the entire year. So the next year, I was like, hey, goal, my goal for the year is to grow enough garlic that I don’t have to plant any, or buy any at the store. Sorry. And then and I like I was able to hit that goal. And then now I grow enough to be able to sell as well. So that’s really fun.
What a cool thing to see that progression and your story, right? Like, oh, I don’t know how many years it took you to kind of grow and learn about it. But then you grew more the following year, and you had not quite enough for the whole year. But like what a learning process and and then the next year set a new goal based on that in that input from the previous year. And you’re like, oh, okay, if I want to have this for the whole year, then we need to increase it to this. And then you’ve increased it even more to the point where you can you have excess and you can sell to other people.
What a what a cool thing to like, just hear about that story in the progression, right? Because so often, we get in our own worlds, right? And we’re like, this is what we need to do. And we get so frustrated because the goal hasn’t been hit, or something failed the first time ever so yeah, yeah, we’re still like a lot of my gardening goals fail. So there’s many times that I’m like, Hey, I’m gonna do this and I’m gonna plant that and like the insects takeover. Right.
So well clearly that one didn’t work out and in those times I’m super grateful that I do have grocery stores that I’m not dependent on only what I grow, but that I think it’s good to work on these skills and to build them. I will say the first garlic that I planted was just straight from the grocery store. I bought a head at the grocery store and I broke it apart into cloves, and I planted it and that was my first garlic. Because that’s how it is. And you can totally do that.
Yeah. But yes, a lot of people don’t know that you can do that. So that’s fun. And I did that for a couple of years. And then eventually I was like, I kind of want to know the variety that I’m growing. Because there’s two different types of garlic. There’s one that’s called a hard neck garlic, and one is a soft neck garlic. And I was really interested in growing garlic that I could braid and hang up the beautiful braided garlic and store it that way. So I had a couple of types of garlic…
How to plant
Timeout really quick. So because if people have never grown garlic, all they know is like the little bulb in the grocery store, right or like minced garlic in a jar. And that’s what you get after you process the garlic. But when you grow it and it’s coming out of the ground, it actually grows this big giant stock green stalk. And that’s what she’s talking about, like you can braid.
Yeah, exactly. Right, the garlic head has a stem that comes out the top with all the leaves the foliage at the top. And the hardneck garlic has a really thick, it’s pretty Woody in the center of it, and it grows up and you can’t braid that because it’s like hard as a rock. So the only thing you can do with hard neck garlic is to cut off the neck cut off the the top and just store them in a bowl, which is totally fine too. They store wonderfully that way.
Garlic braids
But I wanted to create garlic braids. So I think they’re beautiful. And I was really inspired by them. So I set out to find softneck Garlic. And specifically, you can braid any softneck garlic, but I specifically wanted a certain kind, and it’s called Inchelium red garlic. I don’t know why I wanted that variety. But that was the one that was like inspiring to me.
So I actually found some at like my local farmers market. And I think I bought like 12 or 15 heads from the guy. And I was like, this is perfect. It’s local, it’s like from a farmer. And it’s the variety that I want. To buy it on online, it’s quite expensive. Wow. Like, you’re probably going to pay around $15 For like, for like two or three heads ago. Or yeah, something in that range $30 for that anyway, so it’s pretty pricey. So and you can do it that way for sure. The beautiful thing about garlic is you’re gonna grow. One clove is going to grow into a head. And that will produce you know, 10 to 15 new cloves. Then the next year, you can plant those new ones. And you’ll keep just getting more and more garlic. So that’s what I did.
I bought my Inchelium red heads from the guy at the farmers market. And I grew it out. And then the next year I had, you know, like 10 times that much. So it just keeps perpetuating and getting more and more to the point that you can eat some and share some and you know all the things. Yeah, now I can grow it. And maybe you can just share like your experience with growing garlic. Some tips and tricks and things like that. It’s easy to go super, super easy. So this is where I’m at Laura is she’s a much more advanced gardener than I am. I’ve just been doing it longer. Right, she’s been doing it longer than I have.
Jacque’s story
And so a couple of years ago, I started my own baby garden, a little garden box that I was growing and that is another story for another day. But I’m actually borrowing from a neighbor’s land at the moment because I don’t have any land of my own. So I have some really gracious neighbors that have let us put a garden bed on their property that they don’t really use so much.
So when I first started this about two years ago, I was really excited but it was like right in the middle of the summer. And the first year we were just doing the normal gardening things. I wasn’t even thinking about garlic. Laura and I kept talking I kept calling her like we do with this. How do I figure this out? Like a lot of fun a lot of learning that went on in that first year. The first year always has a lot of learning. Learned a lot of cool lessons.
So year two came around and had some successes and some failures learned a lot about that learned more about my soil, different lessons that came along with year two. And then at the, at the end of the year because I was so focused on like spring and summer gardening that by the end of the year, I was like, ah, because I had such limited space that I wanted to utilize the space really, really efficiently as much as I could.
And knowing Laura’s story about the garlic being sufficient with self sufficient with it. Like that, that was one of the first things that she was self sufficient with, or sustainable with, like, it just really inspired me and I was like, I love garlic so much, I want to be that same way if I can, or like at least plant some garlic. So I called Laura and I was like, um, I have no idea how to plant garlic, but this is what I want to do. And she just told me it was so simple.
She said go to the store or wherever I think I can’t remember if I ended up with my farmers market or if I just bought some garlic at the grocery store. Either way, I think probably did a variety of the two. I think I bought a couple of heads at the farmers market but it was a little it was pretty pricey. The garlic that I had access to the farmers market and I was like, I want to spend my whole take home paycheck on garlic, you know, kind of a thing. I mean, I’m exaggerating a little bit but anyway, it doesn’t matter.
So she taught me how to just to break apart the little cloak because I don’t ever use like minced garlic in a jar. I’ve never ever been that person. I always take like a head of garlic when I’m cooking and chop it or minced up or crush it with my garlic press or something. And PS garlic presses are one of the best tools in the kitchen for fresh garlic. If you don’t have one go get one.
I like using a Microplane zester that’s fine.That’s fun. I don’t think I’ve ever done that with garlic. But it’s a good idea. It’s easier to clean than my garlic presses. Oh really? My garlic press is so simple for me anyway. Okay. I know it’s so great. So yeah, so she taught me just to take a little garlic cloves, because to educate you, a garlic head is the whole entire thing, like the round part. And then the garlic clove is the individual piece. If you didn’t know that, then there’s that.
In Spanish, I speak Spanish. And in Spanish, the word for the clove is actually a tooth. So it’s a garlic tooth, which makes a lot more sense to me. Like, it’s like a little tooth, clove, teeth, whatever you want to call it. Anyway, but yeah, so she just told me how far apart to space them. And the cool thing was she said, Oh, plant them in the fall. They’ll over like they’ll stay in the ground over winter. And I was like, what? I had no idea you could do that with some food. So she’s like, oh, yeah, no problem.
So I planted my garlic in the fall. And she helped me figure out how soon before the frost date I needed to plant them because she taught me that they have to start the green part has to start coming poking up out of the ground. They need to establish their roots first. Yes.
No, yes, we did that. And then she said that the next spring they would come up and continually grow. Then I think by June or July, roughly mid summer, you would have garlic ready to go. And that is so cool. So it planted…
Spring vs. Fall planted garlic
On that note, I’ve planted garlic in the spring and in the fall. And in the spring they grow as well. And, but you’re gonna get teeny tiny heads. They’re gonna be little. If you planted in the fall, they have lots of root strength that develops over the winter. And then they just start growing when they’re ready in the spring. And they create big huge heads so it’s recommended to plant them in the fall. You CAN plant them in the spring. But it works way better if you plant them in the fall. I had no idea.
Usually in our area, which is Utah and Idaho, it’s usually best to do like end of September, mid October. So kind of right in that range. Cool.
Cool. Very good. I didn’t know that. That’s the reason why I think it was just the timing of when I was calling and asking you’re like oh, you should plant or like right now. Because it was roughly in that in that time window. So that’s cool to know.
That that’s been my experience anyways.
No, and that’s great. That’s super great. So um, ya know, and then I planned on taking care of them in the spring and I completely forgot to take care of my garlic in the spring and it got really hot really quick that year and my garlic died, it was so sad it went out because they were they were growing the first little bit of the spring. And then I think it just got really hot, really quick. And I forgot to water because I had nothing else in the garden and I just wasn’t in the habit of watering. So they died.
But fast forward a couple of months. And I didn’t plant anything much during that set growing season, we had really hot temperatures all summer and ended up being kind of in a drought and just really struggling with the watering of people’s lawns and all things but I didn’t know that I just wasn’t really feeling super strong about doing a garden that year. And so I chose not to and fast forward found out about the drought and stuff and good thing like good choice. But as the summer started cooling off, I was like, You know what I want to, I want to plant more of like fall crops.
The mystery plant
And so we started planting some garlic, not garlic, some carrots, and some beets and some lettuce and some kale stuff that likes cooler weather crops or that’s shorter cycle. So I planted some and then a few weeks later, I went out to like water them into weed and to take care of them. And I got to call Laura cuz I was like, What the heck is this green thing growing in my garden? I had to like do a video chat with her. And it took us a minute to try and figure it out. Because like, Did you plant like grasses or wheat or something? And I said no, never planted anything right here like that. She’s like, well, it’s flat. She was trying to figure it out based on the botanic like the Botany of the plant.
She said, take off a little piece of it and taste it. And so I did I ripped a teeny little piece off the top of the green part. And I was like, what, that is garlic. Like it was very, very garlicky. Turns out. I don’t know if some of my garlic like just hadn’t sprouted in last fall, or in the spring or whatever. But they were sprouting now. Yeah. And loving life. They probably just went dormant.
Interesting garlic info
One year, I forgot I didn’t get my garlic out of the ground soon enough. Like you’re supposed to Yeah. Many years ago, I didn’t dig it out. And so the cloves just broke apart slightly. And then I had a whole bunch of garlic that grew up like altogether. Like they were creating their own bulbs? Yeah, but they don’t work very well when they’re tight together like that. They weren’t going to create heads. Interesting. Oh, yeah, don’t leave your garlic in as the entire head. Hmm. If you have to dig it up and like space them out if you want to be able to create a head because they need room. Interesting. Yeah. So weird, huh? Interesting.
One cool thing that I learned through the garlic growing process. And Laura, you’re probably like 3000 steps beyond this. But I’m more of a novice at this point. And so interesting with the garlic, there’s the there’s kind of the bottom end and the top end of a garlic clove. And if you’ve never noticed the top and bottom end of a garlic clove, next time you see your garlic, check it out. So the bottom end is where it all kind of comes together at the bottom of the clove, or the head of the club. And then the top is the pointy part at the very top. That’s where the sprouting part comes up. Where the greens come up out of the ground. And the bottom is where the roots grow.
Pre-sprouting garlic cloves
And so if you want to accelerate your, what I learned, I did some YouTube research because I love YouTube. And you can actually take your garlic clove and put them in a little jar of water inside your house to kind of sprout them first before you plant them. We have to make sure that the root part is down because then being in the water will activate the roots growing. And then you can transplant them outside. And I was like that is so cool. yeah, the same mechanism happens if you stick them in the ground. The roots grow first. Yes. It absorbs all the water, it creates roots first and then it’s going to send up a green stalk. If you want to do a science experiment with your kids or something. For sure. Sprout garlic in your fridge or your countertop.
When I say your fridge like grab a little mason jar or a little glass container. Put a little water in it and stick the little garlic clove in there bottom side down and see what happens over time. Fun. Watch it grow. Yeah, and I guess we could talk about like, how you plant garlic like what’s the what are the steps if somebody wanted to? Right, for sure.
I love growing garlic because it’s so easy. I love things that I can plant. They take care of themselves. And then you dig them up.. It’s like super, one of the easiest things to grow. And the funny thing is that you can plant it in the fall when you’re not really like in major planting mode. So it’s just nice to pretty hands off. Yeah, that’s what I’ve noticed about garlic too. It’s really, really simple to do. Right.
So not a lot of pests and things like that because nobody likes to I mean, insects don’t like to eat garlic. It’s super potent. In fact, it’s a big pest deterrent, right?
Spring garlic
That’s cool. And on another note, I’m sorry to interrupt you. That’s okay. Cool thing, if you’ve ever heard of people talking about eating spring garlic, like that’s, like the spring garlic. So it’s like, they actually like you can actually eat the green part of the garlic because it’s very, very garlicy. It’s not as potent as the garlic clove. But you get that in the spring, like Laura was saying, if you plant it in the fall, starts growing intensely, a lot more intensely in the spring, and you can use that like chop it up and put it in your salad or your sautees or whatever.
And that’s what spring garlic is. I think you can eat the garlic cloves too but they’re just gonna be smaller. Yeah. But yeah, ya know, it’s like, yeah, that’s like, kind of a specialty food. Right? It’s not common that you hear about it. It’s gonna be a little more mild than the clove part. Yeah.
How to plant garlic
So if you wanted to plant garlic, you need to get some garlic. Because garlic is not grown by seed, like most vegetables are it actually clones itself? So think about that. That’s kind of weird, right? But it’s an exact clone of the parent plant. Cool. So whatever you plant, it’s gonna grow that exactly. And then so you’re gonna get, like, we talked about the head, and you’re gonna break it into its little parts and pieces. And then you want to make sure the pointy ends are pointing up.
Take off the paper, Husky part.
I usually leave the paper on, because I feel like it protects the plant from the moisture. And it’s a pain to peel. So I just break it into pieces and leave the paper on and plant it that way, but do you peel yours?
I don’t honestly remember what I did, I probably peeled them.
I think it would work if you peel it too. But I just feel like it, like nature would plant it with the paper on. So I’m like, I’m not gonna go through the effort to peel it if it wants to be planted with the paper on, right? Sure. Yep. So I just break it apart. Super simple, you can just break them apart with your fingers. And then you’re gonna plant dig a hole probably about two inches deep. And you’re gonna stick it down in the bottom with the root side down and the pointy side up. If you happen to do it the opposite the plant will, like still grow roots, and it will still send a shoot up, because plants are smart like that.
Right, but you’re gonna want to help it out by getting the root side down and the pointy side up, like we talked about. And then you’re gonna want to space them probably about four inches apart in all directions. So I usually just make a grid in my planting area, I just You can like get a stick and like smash down out a hole, you can dig a hole, whatever works for you. But basically just make a hole and space them about four inches a part and then make a grid like a grid pattern, stick them all in there. And then cover them up. And like we said, plant them in our area about mid September end of September, beginning mid October. So some time in that range.
Watering
And how often do you need to water them? Um, if it’s still hot in September and October, I’d water them a little bit like probably every week or two, but they don’t need a lot of water. In the winter, we’re gonna get a lot, a lot more moisture like rain and snow. So they’ll have plenty over the winter, you don’t need to water them in the wintertime. In the spring, I plant mine in the garden and I can’t grow anything without automatic watering. So mine just starts getting watering them too. But probably once a week.
When it starts getting into the higher temperatures move up to twice a week or three times a week. But then you’ll see in the spring, you probably won’t see a lot of activity in the wintertime. Unless they happen to grow a little bit above the ground. You might see some green sprouts, but they’re okay. And then they’ll die back in the winter and then in the spring they’ll just start growing like probably even before you notice anything out there.
Before before I get out in the garden. My garlic is already up. And so it just grows when it needs to and it’s gonna grow a big long stalk. It grows leaves out and each of those leaves goes to a clove. So the more leaves on it, the bigger your head’s going to be. So that’s a little tip. You can kind of know how your garlic is growing based on how many leaves it has.
I never knew that, I just thought it grew like a straight up stalk. That’s all I thought. It grows up
and then has branches out. Cool. And each one of those is connected to, it’s giving energy to one clove. Yeah.
Harvesting
And then probably next summer, June or July, you’ll notice that the leaves start to turn brown. Okay. And when you start seeing the brown leaves on it, or like the tops, tipping over, things like that, that’s when it’s time to dig it, you can just grab the top and pull it, I usually get a shovel and give it a little bit of lift, just so that I don’t rip off the tops and things like that. If it’s softneck garlic, I like to let it dry for a week or two. And, and then I peel off some of the brown outside that’s starting to dry out. Then I have a soft inner like green stem. And I just lay those together as best I can. And I semi braid them.
I’ve tended to use like some twine or some rope or something like that, just to give it a little more strength. You can just braid the tops, and they should stay together. But I usually tie some twine around it just to give it some extra strength. And then I usually hang mine in my pantry, you can hang them in a spare bedroom, like whatever, wherever you want them to be, in the garage. So I just stick a nail in the wall and just tie a loop on my twine. And that’s usually what I do. But there’s lots of ways to braid garlic.
Curing or drying your garlic
And what do you mean by drying your garlic?
So it’s called curing. And we do this with a lot of plants, especially in the fall. So squash, potatoes, garlic, things like that, but we’re going to cure and that all that means is you’re going to leave it in a place that it can get some airflow for a little while. So it’s just give the chance to that plant a chance to like get a stronger outer outside, you know, yeah, and not mold. Because there’s too much moisture.
So I usually just leave mine on a table outside in my on my patio, or you can like bring them in and leave them out laid out on a table or something like that. So you just want to leave them, some people hang them from a fence post, you just want them to have some airflow, just so that the outside can get a little crusty. Okay,
and you’ve talked about I mean, I know we’re talking about other plants at the moment right too, like how you grow potatoes, you’ve mentioned to me in the past, like you can just put them in a cardboard box and kind of put them in a dark space to like give them the air flows like
cardboard boxes. Yeah, everything stores differently, and you kind of have to learn those as you go. But I usually just put my potatoes in a cardboard box. Garlic, so after I breed it, I usually cut off all the steps, the roots just be just to tidy it up. So I peel off one layer of the papery husk. And then I cut off the roots and braid the rest and I cut off a lot of the leaves at the top just to eliminate some of the plant material.
So I’m really just left with the head, the green stem, and like no roots on the bottom and it makes it really beautiful braid. You can leave the roots on there’s nothing wrong with that. Cool. You can even leave the papery husks on if you want to. It’s just messy, you’re looking. But if you’re not into the aesthetics, and like it doesn’t matter, it stores fine with the paper on it.
And then like how I know you mentioned in your story, right, like learning how long garlic lasts for like, do you like once it’s dried and cured and stuff like does it really just last all year long?
Yeah, it probably does last for close to a year, probably around nine or 10 months. And you’ll notice this as it gets longer and longer like you’ll get some soft cloves that have disintegrated and some that are still firm. So you’re just going to like anything that we store you have to kind of like get rid of those parts that are not good anymore and just keep the good parts. But yeah, really like by the time you’re get to the end of your stored garlic like it should be about time to harvest.
So you could go out and like harvest a new a new batch? Yeah. So by the time I’m to my end of my stored garlic, like I can go out and like dig up a clove or two from the garden and go there. What I was when you first dig it up, it’s actually pretty mild tasting. Oh really? It’s really interesting. It’s not as strong when you first harvest it if it’s fresh. Wow, it gets stronger? It’s pretty watery watery still. So it intensifies, the longer it’s stored because it dries out. Interesting. Fascinating, huh? I had no idea. Yeah. But again, that’s been my experience, but it’s a little more mild when it’s fresh. So very, very, very cool.
Growing a year’s supply of garlic
So, total, this is a question I have for you. I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about this, but I know you’re a family of 4, right? 2 adults, 2 kids. Not that everybody’s family is a family of 4, but just to give people kind of a target to shoot for, how much finances, you know or, like what’s the investment amount in order to start off, like, growing a year’s worth of garlic. Like what does that look like up front? And if obviously you can be growing enough to produce enough cloves to grow the next year, right? Right. You won’t need to buy anymore. What does that look like for a year’s worth of garlic?
Yeah, I mean it depends on how much you use it so obviously you would need to plant more garlic than I would because you use it more, right? Right. And so, like but for me, if I use, I probably use a head of garlic a week. And it kind of depends on if you’re cooking from scratch more or if you’re canning pickles, you’re going to use more garlic, right? Things like that so, um, um, I would say it also depends on if you want to have a specific variety versus just grocery store garlic.
So you can go to the grocery store and buy two heads for a dollar and so the investment to plant enough for a whole year from grocery store garlic would be pretty small. Meaning you could go and spend 4 dollars and have enough garlic for your entire year. Wow. For the following year when you harvest it, right?
From there, you shouldn’t have to buy anything ‘cause you should just, it perpetuates itself from there. But if you want a specific variety, I would probably do like a 3 year plan. Me personally, this is what I would do. If I wanted a specific variety, I would find a place online or locally that I could get the variety, um, I would order my garlic and I would probably start with one or two heads. And then the first year, I would probably grow out a seed stock.
Meaning I would plant it like normal like we talked about with it spaced out and my two heads would now produce, um, 10 times that so now I’d have 100 heads, wait…2 times 10, sorry 20 heads. Yeah, so then 20 heads the following year I would take that and I would plant that and I would multiply that by roughly 10 cloves per head. Sometimes there’s more than that in a head, right? So that would be 200. So that would be my year that I would have enough to eat.
By year 2, the second harvest, you have enough to eat and then you save part of your harvest to plant the next year. Then you’ll take 20 cloves again, 20 heads again and plant your 200 for the next year. Wow. And just keep going and going. So that’s how I would do it. I would just make a longer time period rather than invest all the money upfront, although you can.
You can buy 20 heads, it’s going to be, pricey, you know 80 dollars of garlic or whatever. Right, right. Because especially if you’re buying, even if grocery store garlic, like 20 heads is still, I mean, it’s not terrible, maybe 10 bucks of garlic, yeah. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, so If you want to spend 10 dollars at the grocery store or 100 dollars online on specialty garlic then you know, that’s kind of where you’re at if you wanted to be like fully self sufficient in garlic for a family of 4.
Start with the end in mind and intentionality
But I think this brings up an interesting point, right? Because it’s like, I think we have to start with the end in mind, like what’s your vision. Like what are you desiring for your family. And that evolves as every chapter of our lives of our story. As you heard in Laura’s story, the first year, she just went to the grocery store and bought grocery store garlic because she just wanted to grow garlic. And then she…
I just like seeing how things grow and trying new things, so. Yeah, great. But then you got inspired by this other type of garlic that I’ve never even heard of until today, honestly. There’s a lot of varieties, that just happens to be the one that I love. It grows really well for me, so.
Yeah, I remember going to the farmer’s market probably a year or two ago and seeing all the different garlic types, and I was like a little overwhelmed because there was like 7 types on the table and I’m like, uhhh, you know I mean, they’re all garlic. So I get that. But start with the end in mind, like what do you want for your family? Do you want something special or do you just want garlic? Like does that matter to you? And be aware of that.
Right. I think I chose this variety because I heard that it was really good storage quality and I could braid it. So those would be important things to you. That’s what I was looking for in a variety. And there’s lots of different kinds, there’s ones that are super pungent, some that are mild, some that are hard-neck, some that are like you’ve seen elephant cloves heads? Yes. Huge, giant cloves. So just depends on what your goals are and what you’re looking for so.
I love that. And I think what I’m trying to bring up is just like let’s be conscious consumers, right? Let’s be thinking about these things and be conscious of what we’re starting with. Because if you’re doing a 3 year plan, you want to make sure that you’re getting the garlic that you’re going to be happy with 3 years down the road. Or if you’re putting $80 into garlic, get the garlic that you want. Right, right. Super cool. Okay.
Where to buy garlic
Um, I did want to mention that I do have on my website Carrotgal.com there is a tab at the top called Shop and you can click on that and it goes into my Etsy shop. And if I have garlic available it’s in there and it’s that Inchelium Red variety. So, usually it’s only available in the fall because that’s when I grow it. If it’s fall time and you want to jump in there and see if there’s some available you can do that and I will ship it to you. So there you go! Straight to your door. There you go.
Um, any other questions about garlic? Oh no, I think that’s. We very well covered it. I think garlic is a well covered topic at this point. And we are talking to people in, Laura what’s our growing zone? I’m not an expert at the growing zones. Yeah, I’d have to look it up too. I don’t have it memorized.
I think we’re in the 5-6 range somewhere in there so that’s the temperate zone that we’re talking about. If you’re in a different climate zone garlic is obviously going to be a different experience. You’d just have to plant it at a different time of year. You want to plant it about a month before your first frost date or right at your first frost date, that kind of a time frame. So just adjust that based on your growing zone or talk to your local experts if you have questions if you’re in a different area than we are. Yeah, and let us know if you have questions about garlic too I mean, we’re happy to answer them in comments or chats or anything like that or the Facebook group. Absolutely. Awesome. Alright. See you next time!
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