10/11/2022
PLANTING GARLIC 🌱
Fall is the time for garden prep and planting garlic here in Zone 5a. I haven't actually broken ground in the yard yet, or really decided where I'm going to put the gardens. To light a fire under my executive dysfunction, I bought a 1lb bag of garlic from the grocery store to break into cloves and get into the ground.
Every clove in a head of garlic is a 'seed'. Garlic has an obnoxiously long growing time of 8-9 months, being planted in the fall and harvested in May or June when the lower leaves start to brown. It then undergoes a curing period of 3-4 weeks to make storage possible. It is a vegetable that takes patience, but is obviously worth it. Besides taking an eternity, its relatively easy to grow and gives you Garlic Scapes as a bonus.
Garlic needs a bit of fertilizer (5-5-10/bonemeal/fishmeal), drainage and moisture retention. They are heavy feeders, and need the nutrients to thrive. If youve got heavy soil, adding a bit of sand and peat will help balance it out along with the fertilizer. It also needs to be mulched over the winter, to protect the bulbs. Straw or leaves works best for this, and helps keep the weeds down in the spring. Garlic doesnt like competition.
First step is breaking your heads of garlic apart into individual cloves. I got 146 cloves. Do this a few days before you're ready to plant. You can use this time to prep the soil in your garden bed. If you break the skin on a clove, you can't plant it so save it for the kitchen.
Spent: $5.99
CONFIT GARLIC 🫙
I already had garlic set aside for cooking, so I used the handful of open cloves to make confit garlic.
Put peeled cloves in a small pan, cover with pure olive oil and cook on low until the garlic is soft and a light golden colour. You dont want to deep fry it, so you're looking for small bubbles and cooking it low and slow. Let it cool, pour garlic and oil into a jar with 1" of oil covering the cloves. Store in the fridge for up to a week or in the freezer for 3 months.
Use it on everything. Spreading a clove over toast is heaven and using both the cloves and oil in cooking gives you a new level of depth to that garlicky flavour we all love.
