With our recent warm February weather, almost 60 degrees, the garlic has popped tiny sprouts out in the field. This is the beginning of the season-long process that gives us a multitude of opportunities to harvest and use the garlic as it grows. If you joined us for our community carrot harvest in October, you’ll see familiar rows for this year’s garlic planting! Our cloves were planted right at the start of November, so they’ve had ample time to build some roots and prepare for the spring. Now that they’ve sprouted, they’ll continue to grow steadily until July when we plan to harvest the delicious bulbs.
Before our full harvest, the Farm Team has a couple opportunities to use more than just the heads of garlic we know and love. In the late spring, we’ll harvest some of the garlic early before it reaches its full size. This is “green garlic” and has a more mild garlicky flavor. Green garlic is a wonderful addition to pastas, rice dishes, salads and more. You can use them in a similar way as green onions: they can be sauteed, chopped for garnish, slow roasted and used to bring a lovely subtle garlic flavor to any dish.
By June, the garlic plants will begin to bud flowers at the top of their stems. Before these flowers fully open, we’ll harvest the stems with the buds so that the plant diverts the energy spent on flowering back into the bulbs. These stems are bunched and sold as “garlic scapes”, also boasting a mild garlic flavor and a wonderful aroma when cooked. Our garlic scapes are very popular and only available for a few weeks in June as the plants begin to bud. Enjoy them slow roasted with other veggies, sauteed in butter or added to soups for a slow, sweet garlic infusion.
Our target harvest date for the garlic bulbs is around the fourth of July, as the garlic stalks have browned and the summer weather heats up. We carefully monitor the weather for upcoming rainfall and plan to harvest before regular summer squalls begin. The bulbs are pulled out of the rows and bunched with string. They’ll hang in our curing tunnel for weeks to allow those outer protective layers to become papery thin. We’ll offer some fresh garlic bulbs that should be used right away, but the curing provides that garlicky flavor punch. The biggest and best bulbs are saved for seed, we break apart the cloves to be planted once again in the fall, ensuring next year’s crop is even better quality! Are you interested in how your food is grown?
Keep an eye on your inbox for the Conservancy and Farm Newsletters! We’ll be sharing more field notes about some of our favorite produce here at Willowsford Farm throughout the season.