Garlic

Several different varieties of garlic will be in your share every other week from mid summer when it is harvested until the end of the season. Later in the season your garlic will be cured, or dried, while earlier on it will be fresh.

Cooking Tips

It is hard to think of a recipe that can't be enhanced with a little garlic, but we encourage you to use the garlic from our farm in simple recipes that will let the flavor shine. The world's diverse garlic varieties can be aptly compared to fine wines, with many different flavors and qualities to appreciate. If you are a true garlic lover, consider using the garlic in your share either raw or minimally cooked, in which case it will be pungent and strong, but delicious and healthful, too. For those of you looking for a milder experience, try sautéing your garlic in some olive oil, roasting it in the oven, making some garlic soup, aioli, or garlic bread. Garlic is delicious when paired with tomato, or goes equally well with ginger. We all associate garlic with Italian cuisine, but garlic is essential in many other world cuisines, from Chinese to Greek food.

Storage Tips

Don't refrigerate your garlic heads. Rather, store them in a cool and dry spot in your kitchen, away from direct sunlight. If stored well, garlic should keep for many weeks.

Nutrition

As well as being high in antioxidants, vitamins, and minerals, garlic is believed by some to lower cholesterol, fight heart disease, and prevent the common cold. Garlic is anti-bacterial, and was even used as an antiseptic in World War II.

History

Garlic has been an important crop to humans since at least 5000 B.C. It is in the lily family, along with onions, leeks and shallots, and is regenerated from the cloves rather than seed. Although archaeological evidence remains somewhat controversial, it seems garlic was native to highlands in Central Asia, and transported by nomads to the first blossoming civilizations in the Fertile Crescent. Garlic became popular quickly for preserving and flavoring food.

Field Notes

We grow several varieties of both hard-neck and soft-neck garlic. Hard-neck garlic, as you might have guessed, has a hard stem, or neck, running through the center of the heads. It has more complex and unusual flavors, and grows well in Northern climates. Soft-neck garlic has no hard stalk, more cloves per head, and generally stores better through the winter than hard-neck varieties. We plant our garlic in October, and the plants over-winter in the field until we harvest them in July. We then sort our garlic heads in order to keep the mid-sized heads to use for seed the next fall and cure any heads on drying racks that will not be given out immediately.