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Cured Hardneck Garlic Ready for Storage & Cooking

I can now say that we have successfully made it a full year without buying garlic. My spring garlic scapes began emerging a couple of weeks ago, just as I was finishing off the last shriveling, browning soft neck cloves stored in the cellar. In the fall of 2008 I planted a selection of hardneck seed garlic into large, movable nursery tubs used in the past for trees and large shrubs. In the spring of 2009 — around Solstice — I began harvesting garlic scapes for cooking. That’s when I stopped buying garlic at the farmer’s marke, let alone at the grocery store. Later in summer, I began harvesting, curing and braiding the bulbs themselves, which we have been using until just this week — timed perfectly to the arrival of this year’s scapes! Our next goal is to see if this year’s harvest can take us through yet another 365 days without needing to buy more garlic for the kitchen.

Because garlic grows for almost 9 months before being harvested and cured and because I don’t have a large farm to work with, I chose to grow it in containers instead of in the ground. Using this method, I am still able to produce enough garlic to feed to us through the winter. And we eat a lot of garlic! Growing this way, I may harvest slightly smaller cloves since they are packed into the containers, but I still reap a good sized harvest. Too, by using containers, I can move the the garlic around the garden to capture ideal sun, which travels the horizon much differently in the dead of winter than in the brilliance of late spring. And, I can easily protect the spring plants from rot-inducing rain and cold by rigging up temporary hoop houses. Too, garlic can benefit from reduced watering as the bulbs begin to cure. By keeping it in pots by itself rather than mixed into my beds with other plants still begging for supplemental summer water, I can control the needs of both the thirsty crops and the curing garlic by segregating my stinking rose into containers.

Despite appreciating the long-storing capacity of soft neck garlics and how easy they are to braid, I’ve found they’re more difficult to grow successfully than hard necks. Plus, they don’t offer up delicious scapes in spring, and I find them tough to peel. In Fall of 2009, I planted a mixed selection of garlic in tubs again. I skipped the elephant garlic, which simply rotted out in my 2009 crop. And, I did try one variety of soft neck. Most of that has rotted as well. To be fair, it’s been a really cold and wet spring in Seattle in 2010. However, the soft necks were the first to have problems in my current crop. Yet, the hard necks continue to do great.

So what’s the difference between a hard neck and soft neck garlic? (more…)