Garlic 101--Confessions of a hopeless garli-holic

Garlic 101Probably more than you ever wanted to know about garlic,
but who knows?

By Dean Bull
Traverse City, Michigan

Originally written in 2004
Updated and revised March 2009

My first garlic planting was in March of 2002. Many friends have asked questions about my garlic obsession so I decided to write a piece on the subject. So here ya go…

The beginning. Up until that pivotal March-visit to a local warehouse food store, I thought garlic was garlic—a very common, but dead-wrong assumption. I noticed they had a three-pound mesh bag of garlic for only four bucks—who needs three pounds of garlic, for crying out loud? But there was something different about this particular garlic; instead of being white, it had purple stripes on the skins, and the bulbs were huge by comparison. Impulsively I bought a bag, certain I would never use it all. We had dinner including garlic I had put through the garlic press. The skins I put in the trash container in the garage—I should have composted them, but it turned out to be a good mistake. Dinner was off-the-chart excellent because of the superior taste of this special garlic. The clincher was the next day: I opened the trash container and my mouth WATERED, involuntarily with the fragrance. I knew then I was on to something good. As the weeks went by, I just had to share this wonderful garlic with family, friends, and customers. I went back to the store and bought two more bags—a total of NINE POUNDS of garlic. I had lost my mind… We just laced everything we ate with garlic, and it was wonderful. It was some of this that I planted. It grew, but was very weak and produced small plants and thus, small bulbs. Turns out if you plant it in the fall, the roots begin to grow and continue all winter under the snow pack. When spring arrives, it has a huge root system in place to begin the big push. This crop did not have that natural advantage and thus fell short. I also think it came from South America, which means its seasons were opposite, so it had not had a full dormant cycle. I still have some of the descendents of this original planting and they continue to be less vigorous than other varieties, but just as tasty and wonderful.
Garlic diversity
There are hundreds of different varieties of garlic, divided into two basic groups. They are either hardnecks or softnecks. The kinds you find at the grocery store are softnecks. These are also the ones you see braided. You can’t braid the hardnecks. As their name implies, the neck of the bulb has a rigid stem—this is the result of the top-set—more about that shortly...

Hardnecks are almost never found in grocery stores, although farmer’s markets and food Co-Ops sometimes offer them. The trouble is that even if you find hardnecks, you never know what variety you are getting, or what the properties will be. If you want a reliable source of excellent garlic, I think you have to grow your own—that’s why I do it. The reading I have done suggests hardnecks don’t have the long shelf life of their counterparts, and that’s why they are not commonly available. But I have had hardneck garlic stay fresh for 8 months or more after harvest. Compared to strawberries or bananas, that is an eternity—there are many things I don’t understand…

The distinguishing characteristic of these varieties is that they produce a “top-set”, and are sometimes called “top-setting garlic”. At first the top set looks like a flower bud and some of the material inside the “bud” looks a lot like flowers. They do not produce viable seed, however. More evident is the cluster of “bulbils” or small garlic sets in that same ‘bud’. (They are similar to the top sets of multiplier onions.) If you let them mature, you can plant the bulbils to produce new plants. Different varieties produce different sizes of bulbils, varying from rice-kernel size to grape size. In general, the larger the bulbil, the larger the plant it will produce. Early on, I decided to plant some bulbils from each variety in my ‘herd’. The larger bulbils only took three seasons to produce a full-size bulb of garlic. The German Extra Hardy variety are now six years into the process and I think this year I will have some descendents that I will be able to call ‘garlic’ with a straight face. The first year, these rice-size bulbils grew into a fine grass-like plant with larger rice-size bulbs. These grew to the size of a small pea the following year, and so on. Each year I saved the largest ones to plant in the fall season. You can simplify things for yourself by planting the largest cloves from the largest bulbs. That way you will get the best size and number of successful plants the following year. Eat the smaller ones; they taste just as good as the big ones. I often get questions about “Elephant Garlic”. Turns out it is not garlic at all, but a type of Leek. It may be good to eat, but it ain’t garlic.

Planting. October is garlic-planting month almost everywhere, but I watch the weather and plant accordingly. When I have planted too early, and the autumn has been too mild, they sprout in November-December. Whatever leaves push out early get frozen out over winter and the bulb must start over with only a partial ‘tank of gas’; you end up with weaker, smaller plants. There are a finite number of leaves each clove can produce (it varies by size and the vigor of that individual clove.) so if the first few leaves get killed by freezing, the plant has lost its investment in those leaves. In addition, the first leaf out of each bulb has a special point on it that helps it push through mulch. Subsequent leaves do not have that advantage. I hold off planting the cloves until snow is immanent in the fall. I also put up a snow-fence around the garden to encourage snow to drift over them. As I write these words (March 18), the ground is bare surrounding the garden, but the area on top of the garlic patch is a pack of snow 24” thick—the result of drifting from the snow fence. I am pretty sure there are garlic leaves poking up into that snow pack. If the snow was not there, and the temperature was to drop into the teens, those leaves would die. They can handle a frost, and temperatures down to maybe 25 degrees, but lower temperatures are going to damage the leaves. With that snow pack in place, it simply increases the odds they will get past any extreme weather, normal in this area. (In fact, on March 20, the temperature dropped to 12 degrees. That would have fried any sprouts poking out.)

The bulbs go dormant as the plant matures in July. After an adequate dormancy period of a few months, they have the option of breaking that dormancy. What stimulates them to come out of dormancy is cold temperatures and moisture. (That’s why you never store garlic in the fridge—they think it is November and they begin to produce roots, and they will sprout. The flavor is then not as good, and they will soon shrivel. Store them warmish and dryish for maximum shelf life.) Once planted, they grow all winter under the snow, establishing a root system and developing underground. Rich garden soil is best. Heavy clay soil can hold too much water and cause rot problems, I am told. We have sand, so “well-drained” is a major understatement. I water them if the spring weather gets dry for more than a week. I plant them in triple rows—three cloves wide about 4 inches apart. Then I leave a one foot space and plant another triple row. You want each clove to have a 4-inch circle in which to expand. Use a dibble to poke a hole big enough to drop a clove in—pointy end up. The tip of the point should be under the surface by maybe an inch. Too shallow and they might get nipped by a hard freeze; too deep and the bulb has more work to do to push through to the light. Mulch the crop heavily with grass or straw. You want something it can poke through easily—oak leaves might be a problem. They look like a lily plant, since they are part of the lily family. In June, as the weeks pass, you will see the top set push out and slowly coil up, then slowly uncoil, pointing upward. No more new leaves will develop once you see the top set emerge. As the top set matures it will thicken up as the bulbils expand. “The book” says to cut the top set off in order to get bigger bulbs, and you will. (The top sets are very good to eat in stir-fry dishes, or anything else.) Leaving them to mature may give you better shelf life for your crop, however. If you cut them off and the bulbs expand too much, the protective “wrappers” may split and allow pathogens access to the inner parts of the bulb. It works for me to cut topsets off half of the plants, and leave the rest to mature. That way I have nice big bulbs to use early in the season, and others that are admittedly smaller, but they last well into February and sometimes into March. That’s when the withdrawal symptoms begin; spring fever is brutally intensified, once you become chemically dependent on hardneck garlic.
:-)… In May, as the new plants develop, I harvest a few immature plants and use the whole plant in cooking. (What? You expect me to wait until July for the harvest? That’s not going to happen…I’m not impatient. I am addicted, OK?). The bulbs will not become evident until mid June, and they are the last part of the plant to really fill out just prior to harvest.

Harvest. As July arrives you will be harvesting. The dilemma you will feel is that the longer you leave them in the ground, the bigger the bulbs can get. But if you wait too long, they may not store well. The lower leaves begin to die back first. Each leaf extends all the way down to the bottom of the bulb, and constitutes the papery wrappers you know so well. If all the leaves are allowed to die back before you harvest, the wrappers may rot and disease can get into the cloves. Therefore, when you still have some green leaves and mature top sets, dig them up and park them in a warm dry area out of sunshine. Mine get harvested in stages, based on who I think is ready that day. The harvest process might take two weeks for 1200 plants. Make sure they are not clumped together or they may develop fungus problems. Let them dry thoroughly—use a fan to move air, if needed. By the end of August I normally have the stems cut off and have them sorted into groups, those to save for late use, those to use sooner, and those for ‘seed’ for next year’s crop. Each of these categories applies to each variety. It is a challenge to keep everything labeled and marked as to variety, status, etc. but I am diligent. I am also careful to keep labels on the stakes in the ground so I don’t loose track of who is where. The crop is in the ground for nine months, so it is easy to forget details. I have a batch of mesh baskets that work well for storing and handling the harvested bulbs. You want good air circulation around the bulbs as long as they are in storage. My friend and bonsai buddy, Al Maas, uses the mesh bags from citrus fruit for garlic winter storage. He also consistently raises his own unnamed garlic that put mine to shame in terms of the size of the bulbs. He has a herd of five horses producing compostables for his garden. Is that cheating?

My favorite varieties. I have tried probably 25 different varieties of hardneck garlic, and there are probably dozens I have not tried. Of these, there are 6 varieties that I have found grow well in my location, and that we like. The flavor of these six is outrageously wonderful—besides, I can always buy soft-necks when I run out of the good stuff. Most importantly to me, these six are more user-friendly. In other words, the tummy does not rebel at all, regardless of whether they are roasted, boiled, fried or raw.

My yummy half-dozen list:
1. “Sam’s Favorite” is the name I gave to the original variety I found at the warehouse food store. My wife, Sandie, has the childhood nickname of “Sam” and this one is her favorite. It is mild, tasty and wonderful, like she is. I was never able to find that exact item (the garlic, I mean) described in a catalog or available anywhere. The one variety I found to be very similar is called “purple glazer”.
2. Purple Glazer grown right next to Sam’s Favorite is almost identical in physical size and appearance, but purple glazer tends to be a bit more vigorous. Also, when this one is ready for harvest, the Sam’s is already in the pole barn drying—maybe 2 weeks difference in maturity. We could not discern a difference in flavor or other qualities in side-by-side comparisons. If you are only going to plant one kind, I suggest this one. Try Territorial Seed Company online.
3. Crysalis Purple produces large bulbs and frequently has two or more cloves in one clove skin—just an interesting characteristic I have not seen in other garlics. Maybe a bit more flavorful than the first two, but downright excellent eating.
4. German Extra Hardy plants can grow up to six feet tall—two feet taller than whatever is in second place. The bulbs can be up to 3 inches in diameter and are almost always four cloves per bulb. I have seen only a few examples with five cloves (I even planted some of those cloves and they all produced 4-clove bulbs). Some cloves will be the size of an entire bulb of store-bought garlic, and superior in every other respect, as well.
5. Asian Tempest also has large bulbs but there are more cloves per bulb. It is one of the better long-term keepers. I usually let a group of them mature with the topsets intact for late winter use. I also let them dry out on the stems and I do not remove the garden soil and outer wrapper. I think this helps them last weeks longer than they would otherwise.
6. Georgian Crystal has large bulbs and few cloves, which means the cloves are large too. As with the others, this variety is wonderful.



Late-spring blizzards are a bad thing. On April 3, 2007 the garlic crop stood proudly at eight inches tall. On April 4, northern Michigan got whacked with a full blown, regulation blizzard. The temperature dropped to 20 degrees; it snowed, it blowed, it did not stop for three days. On April 8, the crop was flat level with the ground under a foot of snow, all leaves above ground, died. For the rest of the growing season they tried to recover from this setback. Bulbs were small, plants were weak, and very few plants had the energy to put out top sets. The ones that did, produced puny top sets. It really sucked. During the 2008 season plants and bulbs were again small, but somewhat better. I think this year will be a comeback year, but there will probably still be some residual weakness and small bulbs. I just keep planting the cloves I harvest and hope for the best weather, like most farmers.

Get started. Ordering starter garlic sets is expensive. Many times it will be ten bucks for a half pound of garlic. The good news is you can build your seed stock rather quickly and you never have to buy seed again, except to try a new variety. I have not purchased new sets in three or four years. They are available from many of the seed catalogs and you can find many sources online. If you find friends who grow their own, you will be very lucky. Seedsaver’s Exchange I am convinced is a source of good in the world. They offer German Extra Hardy for $13.50 a full pound. http://www.seedsavers.org/Items.aspx?hierId=89

Cool gadget. Once my wife saw the depth of my garlic obsession, she bought me an electric garlic roaster as a birthday gift. Any time you employ a gadget you are really just trading one inconvenience for another. (I learned that from Sandie’s brother, Dennis Cross). This gadget is a very good trade, in my estimation. You load the garlic into it, close the lid and push the button. You come back 25 minutes later and you have perfectly roasted garlic—every time. It was available from Target, but only online. It may be available elsewhere now. It is shaped like a giant garlic bulb, and it costs about thirty dollars.

Give garlic a try. Start building the soil with compost and all the things you would normally do and have it all ready for an October planting. You can order sets early and they will hold shipping until September or October.

There are photos related to this piece in my photo album--check it out.