Now is the Time to Plant Garlic!

Posted on Thursday, October 24, 2019 · Leave a Comment 

The easiest crop I grow every year is garlic. I plant it in October, mulch it well, and harvest it in early August. That’s it. If it’s well mulched, I don’t even have weed the bed more than once or twice.   Not only that, I use this year’s harvest to plant next year’s crop, so it’s free. Each year my garlic crop gets better as I use the best of this year’s harvest to plant next year’s crop. My garlic is well adapted to my soil and climate.  

 

 

If you want to grow garlic but don’t have any for planting, you can buy some “seed garlic” on-line, or you can check with a local farm stand for garlic you can plant. Don’t use grocery store garlic. Much commercial garlic has been treated with chemicals to prevent sprouting. And most grocery store garlic is the wrong kind for planting in New England – and some of it is from China. I avoid anything grown in China, due to concerns about toxic chemicals used there.

 

 

There are two basic categories of garlic: soft neck garlic and hard neck garlic. Grocery store garlic is usually soft neck, the kind you see braided and hung up in Italian restaurants. It is less hardy than hard neck garlic, a bit bland and less interesting to cook with.

 

 

Hardneck Garlic ready for planting

Here in New England we should plant hard neck garlic, which has a stiff “scape” or stem that starts in the middle of the bulb, and grows up as the stalk and produces a flower in July. The fresh scapes can be cut and used in sauces or omelets. 

 

 

To plant garlic, begin by selecting a bed in full sunshine. Weed it well and make sure the soil is loose and fluffy. In a bed 24- to 30-inches wide I plant 3 rows of garlic. I make furrows with a hand tool or hoe and add some organic fertilizer which I then stir into the soil.

 

 

Divide a bulb of garlic into individual cloves for planting. Mine vary from 4 or 5 cloves per bulb up to a dozen. Most have 6 or 8 cloves per bulb. I plant my cloves a hands-width apart, which is about 5 inches. I push each bulb into the soil so that the bottom of the clove is about 3 inches deep, or with the tips 2 inches from the soil surface.

 

 

Place your garlic cloves on the soil to establish space before planting

When I plant the second row I stagger the cloves so that they are not lined up with the first row. In the third row I match the cloves with those in the first row. Staggering the bulbs insures a little extra space between bulbs. When all are in the soil I push soil over the cloves and pat the soil down with my hands. If your soil is sandy or a heavy clay, adding some compost before planting is good.

 

 

The last step is mulching your bed. You can use straw or mulch hay. Straw should not have any seeds, but it is much more expensive to buy – usually more than $10/bale. Mulch hay is just hay for cows that got wet and is no longer tasty to them. It should be under $5/bale.

 

 

Take a section of a bale and shake it over the bed. It will fall apart and spread out. I put 8 to 12 inches of loose hay or straw over the bed. By spring it will have compacted to 3 inches of mulch, and the garlic will grow right through it – though weeds won’t. The mulch will keep the soil warm for a while this fall, which is good. The garlic needs to grow roots and get established before the soil freezes.

 

 

Garlic grows through th mulch, shown here in May

Sometimes garlic will send up a green shoot in the fall. When this happens, gardeners write me, asking if their garlic will suffer if it grows in the fall. Nope. The frost will kill the greenery, but not harm its potential, come spring.

 

 

Garlic has many uses. Not only will it scare away vampires, it is an important ingredient in many dishes. And it can be used medicinally. Vermont herbalist Rosemary Gladstar is famous for her fire cider recipe. This concoction is used to help prevent colds and other winter plagues. It contains garlic, raw apple cider, horseradish, hot peppers and other natural ingredients. It can have quite a kick, depending on how you make it.

 

 

Fire Cider book cover

Rosemary Gladstar and a group of her colleagues and students have put together a lovely book called, “Fire Cider! 101 Zesty Recipes for Health-Boosting Remedies Made with Apple Cider Vinegar” published by Storey Publishing in 2019. Nearly every one of the recipes includes garlic. The book also tells the tale of how a company tried to trademark the name Fire Cider, though recently, I have learned, the upstarts lost in court.

 

 

What else is garlic food for? Here is my recipe for garlic bread, which is good with almost any dinner: Crush 2 to 3 cloves of garlic in a press, and mix with a stick of butter that is soft and slightly warm. Add 3 tablespoons of grated Romano or Parmesan cheese and ½ teaspoon of tarragon, and mix with a fork. Slather liberally on sliced Italian or French bread, wrap in aluminum foil, and heat in a 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. Consume! This has no calories if you use your own garlic.

 

 

If you don’t have a vegetable garden, plant some in a flower bed. The scapes in mid-summer are curly and stiff, and great in flower arrangements. So get some garlic, plant some, eat some and stay healthy!

 

 

E-mail Henry if you are interested in joining him on a Viking Cruise from Paris to Normandy and back next June. He’s at henry.homeyer@comcast.net or PO Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746.

 

 

 

 

Filed under Article · Tagged with fire cider, garlic recipes, hardneck garlic, planting garlic, Rosemary Gladstar

The One-Day Cold

I don’t often catch colds. Part of that may be that I eat well, and get plenty of sleep and exercise daily. Or maybe it is just that I don’t have school-age kids and work out of my house, so I don’t come in contact with all the germs that are floating about. But over the holidays I went to parties, saw the grandkids, shopped and had plenty of chances to catch a cold. And I did catch one.

Elderberry elixir

One morning shortly after the holidays I woke up with a sniffle, a scratchy throat, and a general feeling of malaise. So I got out the big guns: Fire Cider and elderberry elixir. I took about half an ounce of each of these herbal cures after breakfast, again at mid-morning, and then after lunch. As if by miracle, my symptoms started to go away. I continued the cure, and by bedtime I felt fine. Coincidence? Perhaps.

Several years ago I learned how to make Fire Cider from Vermont herbalist Rosemary Gladstar. She explained that the ingredients in this potion stimulate the immune system and help the body heal itself. That makes sense to me as the recipe (see below) contains garlic, horseradish and hot pepper – and more! Any one of these is likely to make my body wake up and pay attention!

Here’s the basic recipe as given by Rosemary Gladstar: In a glass jar combine the following ingredients:

• 1/2 cup grated horseradish
• 1/8 cup minced garlic
• ½ cup finely chopped onion
• ½ cup grated fresh ginger
• ½ to 1 teaspoon powdered cayenne (or other hot pepper)
• About a quart of organic vinegar, preferably locally made and containing the web of live bacteria that constitute the “mother” of the vinegar.
• ½ cup honey (or to taste), heated till well liquid.

Fire Cider before decanting

All ingredients are best if fresh, local and organic; I grew most of mine. Let this steep, preferably for 3 to 4 weeks, then pour through a sieve and it is ready to use. You can use it sooner than 3 weeks, of course. Seal with a plastic lid, or put a plastic bag over the jar and seal with a canning lid. The fumes are strong enough to eat through a normal canning lid over time. Keep cool or in the fridge.

For Christmas my sister-in-law, Lisa Goodale Brinton, gave me some Fire Cider she had made which was an enhanced version of the one I learned from Rosemary Gladstar. She made it by the gallon, adding rosehips, sun-dried shiitake mushrooms, rosehips, orange and lemon juice and zest, fresh thyme and rosemary and fresh turmeric root that she had fermented using kambucha. It tasted very good, and was the potion I used to help kick my cold.

After I made my Fire Cider I added some fresh rosemary and lemon juice: a sprig of the rosemary and the juice of a lemon. I added it after I first tasted it, and it only improved the flavor. I read that one can add powdered turmeric instead of macerated fresh fermented turmeric, so I added a teaspoon of dry turmeric powder. Spices don’t last forever, so it is always good to buy fresh spices regularly. My turmeric was several years old, so I got some fresher stuff to use.

While reading to see if anyone could explain why Fire Cider might help kick a cold I came across some amazing news: a corporation called Shire City Herbals has trademarked the term Fire Cider and has filed lawsuits to prevent others from using the term. Yikes, I could be in trouble now! But apparently lots of protest has been made; see www.freefirecider.com for more information. Rosemary has been sharing her recipe since the 1970’s and the recipe was included in her wonderful book,Rosemary Gladstar’s Herbal Recipes for Vibrant Health – which came out before Shire City Herbals even started their business.

I also recently made some elderberry elixir. I went to my freezer and got some of my frozen berries. In a saucepan I heated 6 cups of elderberries, 2 cups of water, a quarter cup of honey, a couple of tablespoons of lemon juice and half a teaspoon of cinnamon. I brought it to a boil and simmered it until the berries were mushy.

Jelly cone

I used a jelly cone to separate the elderberry pulp and the juices. This is an aluminum cone with lots of small holes. It comes with a pointed wooden masher that I use to crush the berries and extract the juice. The 6 cups of berries produced a little less than a quart of the elixir. I will keep it in the fridge as otherwise if would ferment and spoil.

I can’t promise you that Fire Cider or my elderberry elixir will prevent or cure the common cold. But at worst, they are great placebos: tasty and full of zing.

Henry can be reached at P.O. Box 364, Cornish Flat, NH 03746 or by e-mail athenry.homeyer@comcast.net.

Copyright © 2014 Henry Homeyer

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