Why You Should Grow Your Own Garlic

The central distinction in garlic botany is between the hardneck and softneck varieties. The cheap stuff from the supermarket is of the softneck persuasion, while the good stuff is all hardneck.

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Sometime in the mid-1990s, after a lifetime of servitude to the shriveled heads of garlic that I would bring home from the supermarket, I finally declared myself independent. As a cook and a garlic lover, I would no longer stand for garlic heads that contain 47 cloves each, cloves that I had to painstakingly peel one by one in order to get the itty-bitty chunks of garlic inside. After every such ordeal my fingers would appear to have been tarred and feathered by whisps of garlic paper.

But since my independence I have been fortunate to interact exclusively with big, easy-to-peel cloves. It’s the best garlic that money can buy, and I get it for free because I grow it. It takes about nine months, from September to the following summer, for a clove to grow into a head.  And if you are going to invest that much time and effort, you should be planting the good stuff.

The central distinction in garlic botany is between the hardneck and softneck varieties. The cheap stuff from the supermarket is of the softneck persuasion, while the good stuff is all hardneck. The name hardneck refers to the flower-like organ, called a “scape,” that sprouts from the middle of the garlic plant around solstice. It also has larger cloves, and fewer cloves per head, and peels about as easily as a banana. The scapes must be pulled in order to redirect all of the plants energy into the below-ground bulb, so to make it grow as large as possible. This chore is also the first garlic harvest of the season. Everyone loves scapes. These charismatic and curly growths, green and spicy and full of garlic juice, get the garlic season going in style.

If you want to be independent like me and plant your own garlic, the best place to find hardneck is your local farmers market. You can also order hardneck garlic online, although most farms tend to quickly sell out of the good stuff like Romanian Red.

Wherever you get your seed garlic it will cost you. Just remember that your initial investment will be offset by the fact that you will never have to buy garlic again, while you enjoy the crème de la crème of garlic.

I came into my current variety of choice—Romanian Red—at the Tonasket Barter Faire in the Okanogan Valley of North Central Washington State. Folks had gathered around the pickup trying to figure out what to trade the grower, David Ronniger, for his vibrant heads of Romanian Red. I slid to the front with some crispy Benjamins and paid the man his money for a 50-pound sack.

With this garlic, and a book called Growing Great Garlic by Ron Engeland, also of the Okanogan, I started growing a lot of great garlic in Missoula. I would give it away and trade it for meat and salmon and pickles and teach my friends how to grow it. Today my garlic is all over my hometown of Missoula and can be found as far east as the Upstate New York finger lakes, as far north as Anchorage, and as far south as Albuquerque. I have freed so many of my friends from the tyranny of bad garlic that I feel like such a boss. Because what do bosses do? They teach their friends to be bosses too.

As you round up your seed garlic and figure out where to plant it, you should also take steps to prepare that ground as necessary. If it’s a fully prepped garden bed that’s ready to go you can skip this step. But if the location of your new garlic patch is overgrown with weeds, or is currently a piece of lawn, I kill all the plants by laying down a piece of plastic, preferably black. After eight weeks the weeds or grass will be gone and the dirt beneath the plastic will be mostly worm poop, and will turn over like butter. Since I can’t stand to see an empty piece of dirt in my garden, I like to fill it with short season crops like radish, cilantro, spinach, and other plants that will be done by late September or peacefully coexist with the garlic I plant around it.

There are as many ways to use scapes as there are ways to use garlic itself. Because scapes are garlic. Make scape pesto with pine nuts, olive oil and parmesan cheese. Steam the scapes like asparagus or green beans. Use the scapes as skewers to grill meat.

The other day I chopped up some scapes and put them in a pan with some radishes I pulled from next year’s garlic patch. I fried the scapes and radish—including the chopped radish leaves—and when they were cooked, I poured in some beaten eggs. I put a lid on the pan and let the eggs cook slowly until they were done to my liking. I seasoned with salt and hot sauce, and enjoyed my first fresh garlic of the year.  The feisty taste of freedom tastes so good.