Garden Medley

I’m not Italian, but I am married to one. But even before then I was a major fan of cooking with garlic. I keep a lot of it in my kitchen and I think it’s the perfect thing to grow in my garden.

To get started just head out to the store and buy some heads of garlic. Break them up into individual cloves and plant. They’ll start sprouting in a few weeks. You can even plant garlic in the fall before the ground freezes (if you live in a place where that’s an issue) and it will grow for you come spring.

Plant the cloves about six inches apart with the pointy end up about an inch underground. Fertilize and water.

As your garlic grows, break off any flowers that appear. You want your plants to focus on growing the garlic bulb, not flowers. Keep taking care of them until the leaves yellow, then dig up and rinse. Cure them in a shady, well ventilated place for at least two weeks. Then you can store them someplace cool, dry and dark until you want to use them. No, not your refrigerator, which is colder than necessary for storing garlic. They’ll last around two months.

I’m thinking that I’ll try growing elephant garlic this year, as it’s my husband’s favorite variety. The bulbs are quite a bit larger than the usual garlic and the flavor is excellent. I hope it works.

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