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ON THE GARDEN PATH by Carolyn Herriot
For centuries, gardeners have revered garlic for its health-promoting properties and many culinary uses. In these times of increasing stress, adding garlic to one’s diet boosts the immune system and helps combat infections and illness; garlic contains selenium, an essential trace element often lacking in our diets.
Most supermarket garlic has been fumigated with methyl bromide, an anti-sprouting chemical, so it is best to start with organic garlic bulbs from a reputable garlic grower. Make sure the garlic is free from white rot, a fungal disease that will wipe out your harvest for years to come. (See sidebar.)
Garlic falls into two distinctive sub-species: Hardneck, or Rocambole varieties (Allium ophioscorodon) produce a flower spike and have large, easy-peeling cloves, which will store from six to eight months. Rocambole garlics should be planted in October.
Softneck, or braiding, varieties (Allium sativum) have smaller cloves with no central stalk, as they do not produce flower spikes. They are generally spicier, with cloves that will store for a year. Softneck garlics can be planted in October, but some varieties, such as Silverskin, are best planted in spring.
Elephant garlic (Allium ampeloprasum) is actually a perennial leek, and has a much milder flavour. Its cloves split up when it is dried, so elephant garlic does not store for very long.
12 tips for top garlic
1. October planting is best for hard-necked and most soft-necked garlic varieties. Plant cloves about six weeks before the first hard frost, as they need a month of near-freezing temperatures, and at least 100 days to mature. Spring planted hardneck garlic does not grow into full-sized bulbs.
2. Choose a sunny site with rich, well-drained sandy loam – not too rich, or the tops will overdevelop. Garlic does not do well in light, sandy soils; heavy clay soils; or soils lacking in organic matter. If your soil is poor, amend it with compost and aged manure, and add wood ash to aid in bulb formation.
3. Replanting the largest cloves gives you the largest bulbs. To avoid problems with white rot, practise yearly crop rotation.
4. If garlic is planted too close together, or has to compete with weeds, it will result in smaller bulbs. Space cloves six inches apart in the row, and plant the rows a foot apart.
5. Plant individual cloves with the pointy end up, about two inches below the soil surface.
6. To cut down on weeding and watering, mulch with straw in spring, once the ground has warmed up. This will facilitate hand pulling later, rather than forking it out, which may injure the bulb.
7. Stop watering about three weeks before harvesting, to allow the bulbs to cure.
8. For hardneck garlic, cut off the flower spikes (scapes) when they appear. The energy used to go to seed detracts from the bulb size.
9. Harvest garlic bulbs in July, when about two-thirds of the leaves have turned yellow. Don’t wait until all the leaves have yellowed, as the cloves separate in an over-mature bulb, and will not store well.
10. Dry the bulbs outdoors in the sun for two or three days, unless it is really hot, which may cause them to brown, or threatening to rain, which would cause them to rot.
11. Remove surface soil from bulbs, but preserve the protective skin layers. Hang to dry in a warm, dark, airy place in bunches of six to seven bulbs. Garlic requires four to six weeks to cure properly.
12. Storing garlic in a cool, dark place with ventilation provides the longest storage life.
Watch for white rot
White rot is an aggressive fungus, which first hit California in 1939. It spreads rapidly through root systems, and is deadly to garlic. It can survive in soil for 30 years, and, once established, is almost impossible to eradicate. Harvesting equipment, cloves, and running water all spread fruiting bodies (sclerotia).
Sclerotia wake up in cold weather, activated by gases released by garlic roots. It only takes one sclerotium per 10 kilograms of soil to set off the white rot disease. One per quart of soil is enough to kill half the plants in a field. Make sure any garlic you purchase is free from this deadly disease.
From A Year on the Garden Path, A 52-Week Organic Gardening Guide by Carolyn Herriot. $29.95. Earthfuture Publications, Victoria, BC. Available from Banyen Books and Duthie Books or
www.earthfuture.com/gardenpath
Carolyn Herriot has been operating The Garden Path Organic Plant Nursery in Victoria since 1989, from which grew her organic seed business, Seeds of Victoria. Carolyn shares her passion for gardening by way of lectures and as a garden writer, and appears weekly on Get Up and Grow and the Go show on Global and CHTV.
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