Growing Garlic

(its an aphrodisiac)

To begin with, this is no Johnny-come-lately to the horticultural world. Indeed not, the plant was well known in ancient Egypt and has been found in pharaoh’s tombs (King Tut had 6 pieces saved with him some 3,350 years ago) It also has been reputed to have magical properties; worn around the neck protected the wearer from evil. Evil would have to be pretty desperate to bother somebody that smelled that bad. Some cultures considered it an aphrodisiac or so I’m told by a normally reliable source while others used it for headaches. With my tongue firmly in cheek I might suggest that some might have a headache when others were wearing it as an aphrodisiac. One never knows about these things.

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Garlic truly has antibacterial properties and if minced up and poured over your vegetables it cures or prevents stem rot diseases. This pouring technique also repels all manner of creeping bugs on your vegetables I’m told. I guess it isn’t an aphrodisiac for bugs.

Garlic is normally planted from small bulblets. You break up a large bulb into the smaller pieces just before planting and plant two inches deep and five inches apart. In cold climates, I recommend planting in the fall (along with your other spring flowering bulbs) so they can establish their roots before winter freezeup. Like flowering bulbs, they actually require this cold dormancy if they are going to grow properly the next year. This fall planting gives them the opportunity to really explode into growth first thing in the spring leaving refrigerator-stored and spring planted garlic in the dust.

While I recommend planting them at the same time as your bulbs, I do not recommend the same place. Nope, give them their own garden spot in the full sun, loaded up with extra helpings of compost or well-rotted manure. Because garlic is shallow rooted, the nutrients in the top few inches will make or break your crop and garlic simply responds very well to compost. The garden area has to be well drained and should not have grown any member of the onion family in the previous year as onion thrips are one of the insect pests that will actually bother this plant.

Keep the garlic well watered during any dry spells during the summer, remember that it is shallow rooted, to help it keep growing. The plant will form tall green stalks that resemble onions although they are a bit taller than your normal garden onion and have a funny looking flower on the top. While you can eat the flower buds, lightly grilled or stir-fried in butter, this is something I neglected this summer.

At some point later in the summer, the tops of the garlic will start to yellow and fall over. As soon as one or two of your bulb tops do this, help the others along by bending them over as well. This bending over will start the bulbs swelling as they try to store energy for overwintering. Have we got news for them? The bigger the better but they aren’t going to make the winter because when we think the bulbs are big enough, we’re going to pull them up.

We’ll let them cure or dry out for a week or so in a protected spot out of the weather and in this regard they are treated exactly like onions. Clean all dried soil from the bulbs and decide how you are going to store them. They store best at 32F and about 65 percent humidity. Cool and dry. If you let them get above 40F, they might sprout on you. You can braid a few up using string to hang on your kitchen door or give away as presents to impress your friends or perhaps a special friend who might be in need of an aphrodisiac.

While garlic is a trouble free crop, there is one special pest that visits. This is the stem and bulb nematode and while it is too tiny for you to see, it leaves an unmistakable result. If the bottom of the bulb is swollen and spongy or the skin has lengthwise splits, your garlic has been infected and the bulb should be thrown away. Sometimes the leaves are swollen and twisted but this is not present in all infestations. Cleanliness is next to godliness in the garlic garden so clean up all debris, do not allow bulbs to sit over the winter and if you have an infestation, remove all infected bulbs from the garden area.

Certainly do not use any garlic from an infected patch as a seed crop.

So there it is, a magical plant. Good for the garden, great for controlling diseases and pests, great on tomato sandwiches and an aphrodisiac to boot.

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