"I once worked with a powerful son of Athens whose reverence for garlic left nothing to be desired. He used it daily internally and externally. He ate it regularly raw and rubbed it on his chest and in his nostrils. He was a dynamo of flesh and bones who visited physicians only to be admired and to give them a little advice. He once invited me to his bachelor's hovel for dinner. This was the menu: two chickens roasted with garlic and rosemary, two loaves of French bread, each cut lengthwise and smeared with garlic and olive oil, two heads of raw garlic (about twenty cloves), two quarts of wine, and two enormous raw chicory roots."
-- Angelo Pellegrini, The Unprejudiced Palate
In his passionate ode to kitchen gardening, The Food Lover's Garden, author Angelo Pellegrini writes of the "indispensable dozen" aromatic plants that any aspiring epicure must have have in his or her garden. Garlic wins top billing, beating out parsley, thyme, shallots, basil, and 7 other would-be contenders by a long shot. Given his name, perhaps you're not too surprised. What may come as a surprise, especially to the gardening novice, is how easy garlic is to grow and when to grow it.
Garlic, unlike its allium sister the onion, generally goes into the ground in the fall, sleeps during the winter, wakes up in the spring, and reaches maturity in the summer. Check with your local extension agency or gardening club to know the best time for planting garlic in your area. A good rule of thumb is 1-2 weeks after the first hard frost, which means the month of October for many gardeners in the northern hemisphere.
"I have read in one of the Marseille newspapers that if certain people find aioli indigestible, it is simply because too little garlic has been included in its confection, a minimum of four cloves per person being necessary."-- Richard Olney, Simple French Food
Knowing your local climate will help you to determine what type to plant. There are hundreds of different garlic varieties, all of them falling into two basic categories: hardneck and softneck. Gardeners living in areas where winters are long and cold will have better results with hardneck varieties, while people living in more moderate climes will probably be better off with soft ones. Once you've decided whether you're a hard or a soft grower, you can further increase your chances of success by researching the geographic origins of the different garlics on the market and finding one that matches with your climate. For example, someone living in the bitter cold north of North America or Europe, will probably have good luck growing a Russian or Siberian variety such as "Bogatyr" or "Choparsky".
Once you know what to plant and when to plant it, you're half done. Garlic is not terribly fussy about its living conditions. Any well-drained, loamy soil with good full sun should produce a decent bulb. As with most other plants, the more organic matter you can gave your garlic, the better. To plant, separate the bulb into individual cloves, placing each clove root end down in a hole or furrow so that the cloves are 2 inches beneath the soil and 6-8 inches apart. Top the soil with 6 or so inches of organic mulch which will serve as your garlic's winter coat. The colder the winter, the warmer the coat, so feel free to add or subtract an inch depending on the severity of your winter.
In the spring, you can help your garlic along by feeding it with a liquid seaweed or fish-based emulsion. You can also anticipate the garlicky meals ahead by harvesting the "scapes", the tender flower stalks that emerge from hardnecks in the spring and make nice additions to soups and salads. For harvesting the bulbs, you'll have to wait a bit longer, until late June or early July in most parts of the US. Watch the leaves to know when to harvest. When half to three quarters have turned yellow-brown, you can dig up a test bulb. The timing of the harvest is important. Dig too early and you'll miss out on the big bulbs, too late and the cloves will start to separate from each other. Garlic can be enjoyed fresh from the ground or cured. To cure your bulbs, hang them in a drafty and dry area out of the sun. Note that certain varieties store better than others, so take that into consideration when planning your garlic garden and gastronomy for the year.
