Garlic Madness Under the Moontree

Yes, madness I say. Garlic everywhere, and not a vampire in sight!

This is, I think, my fifth fall planting garlic. (It all started with some sprouting store-bought stuff several years ago; several garlic related posts here.)

Today, I just finished planting 175+ cloves of five varieties of garlic. Next summer there will be much deliciousness. Last year's crop is being consumed even as you read this, and, well, we may be reduced to buying garlic by late spring. No chance of that in fall 2010 though.

This year we bought a two-pound sampler pack from Filaree

Farms, plus planted our own planting-stock of last years Cuban Purple/Rojo. Sampler included several hard neck and softneck varieties (links on both the variety and specific cultivar give detailed information):

• Chesnok Red a hardneck purple-stripe garlic said to
  be good for baking;


• Killarney Red another hardneck, a true rocambole;


• Cuban Purple / Rojo de Castro, a delighful hardneck creole that we love in pesto;


• S&H Silverskin, a softneck, braidable, silverskin variety;
  
• Lorz Italian, a softneck, braidable, artichoke variety

Planted 25 of each of the four, plus 50 of the Cuban

Purple/Rojo (we really really like them). Still have Silverwhite Silverskins from last crop to eat, and plant if we decide too. A couple of little spots left with finishing fall stuff that can go to garlic in a week or two.

The Cuban Purple/Rojo we planted was ordered from Filaree Farms last year, then grown by us in '08-'09 and saved for replanting. (We have some to eat too, but we really liked it, so a third of the best bulbs were saved for "seed" for this year.) Our planting stock was much brighter red than I remember the mailorder Rojo planting stock; maybe we should call it Rose City Rojo? In any case, we love the stuff -- great flavor, easy mild "burn" in pesto, easy to peel. One of our four-year-old's favorite jobs this summer was peeling the Rojo garlic for dinner.

In taste testing the planting stock, the Killarney Red had a nice, easy but complex flavor. Haven't tasted the others yet, but since we have 1-10 cloves of each left, we will soon. (Grin).

We have planted 25 cloves of each variety, plus an extra 25 cloves (total of 50) of the Rojo, plus a "green garlic" plot of an additional 25 miscellaneous cloves.

Green garlic is what it sounds like: Garlic that has not been dried or cured, and in some cases may not even have really started forming bulbs.

It is surprisingly delicious, and is like a mild garlic-flavored green onion. So, since there where lots of odds and ends (at least 5 cloves of each variety) I planted a patch to pick before the bulbs mature without regret.

Growing garlic also provided the interesting discovery that chopped greens -- just some of the leaf or even the stalk of a pulled green garlic -- make a lovely garlic-flavored chive sort of effect!

Last year we ordered late, and put in about 40 Cuban Purpe/Rojo and 40 Silverwhite Silverskins in two batches; one location did pretty well, the other, not so well. Our one-pound investment in planting stock yielded about 12-15 pounds of garlic, if you include all the sampled green garlic and greens. We still have eating / planting stock from the Silverwhite's, but I think we may have enough garlic in the ground, including one silverskin variety allready.

Now that the bulk of the garlic planting is done, there are always a few cloves extra for the available space, so we will be having a small side by side taste test comparison soon.

Coming Soon: Cider Season!

Fall Arrives for Real; Summer Recap Part II

Fall arrived for real last week. Two weeks ago daytime temps peaked out between 90-100 F; last week the morning low was 46F and the daytime high all of 67F or so. Good grief. But welcome to Southern California, neh? For the last two years Halloween has had a daytime high right around 80F, although one year not long ago it bucketed rain. Go figure.

We are recovering from numerous colds in the house, and trying not to cross contaminate, and so far I am the only one who has missed all of the bugs. So everyone is home, lallygagging about, resting up. In the cool overcast I am casually cleaning up outside for fall planting as my form of rest.

The basil we started from seed last April is still going great guns, and, in fact, had taken over a significant part of the raised bed. We pulled and cut back about half the basil, and topped the rest so it would not go to seed, and have picked and cleaned about 4 quarts of basil leaves. The job this morning is to make up numerous batches of home made, home grown pesto and freeze it up for winter enjoyment.

Took two of us nearly an hour to pick and wash the leaves, but the pesto should make up quick after a short trip to Trader Joe's to stock up on sheep's milk Parmesan cheese and pine nuts. We have plenty of HGO (home-grown organic) garlic.

Of course part of the clean-out is to ready space for fall garlic; five or six varieties on tap this year, more on that in a later post.

Granola Making Day . . .Mmmm!

Yesterday was granola making day. I hate to admit to it as it is such a stereotype, but its good, and really healthy, and really easy to make. We have "his" and "hers" flavors made from the same basic supply of organic rolled oats, olive oil and honey, baked on a tray in the oven. In "his" mix slivered toasted almonds go into the oven too, and the mix is cooked a little darker. Amusingly, the "hers" variety has, er, no nuts.

The "his" variety has, in addition to almonds, unsalted cashews, dried cranberries and organic raisins; "hers" uses a Trader Joe's "golden berry" mix with golden raisins, dried cranberries, blueberries, and cherrys, plus some additional organic brown raisins.

Really good as cereal with milk, as a hand snack, with a few dark chocolate chips as dessert, on top of or mixed into yogurt (especially the TJ maple yogurt) and vanilla ice cream. And as it happens the whole oats are pretty good for fiber and cholesterol reduction, if those items are a concern.

A Very Dry Summer Means Good Drying Weather

All the basil smell reminds me that we had a great summer drying things in the new hanging food dryer from Path to Freedom's web store. Figs, tomatoes, some grapes-to-raisins, all eaten already. Also, in the photo below, we dried more of that same HGO Genovese Basil, various HGO apples and HGO New Mexico Chili's. Also marjoram, and a wonderful lime-basil that has the unfortunate tendency to attract bees (lots of them!) when made into pesto and eaten outside. It's hard to keep up on the apples as people chomp them up almost as fast as we can dry them.

Our apples were done a month ago, and we canned up many jars of applesauce (plain and honey) and new apple butter. The Oakglen run should happen at the end of October, first of November, with cider and more apple goodies. Alas, it will be harder to air dry apples that late, but we might try the hanging dryer in the kitchen.

Speaking of Dry: Seeds Dry on the Vine

In addition I am reminded that we harvested dried coriander seeds, and dried celery seed (I let the celery get away from me, was slow to remove it, and found the seeds quite easy to harvest), as well as saved seed for planting from the "Bee" Basil. I still have a huge store of saved sunflower seeds, and really hope to get some in the ground at school in the spring. We enjoyed beans and peas all spring and summer from seed I saved last year. We have some pepper seeds saved too. It's really pretty rewarding to grow things from seed that you grew and saved, rather than having to go to the store each year for a new commercial packet.