Green Garlic

We harvest some of our garlic in the late spring when it is still premature, and the entire stalk is edible and delicious, with a surprisingly mild flavor.

Cooking Tips

The most important thing to remember with green garlic is that the entire stalk is edible (after you cut away the roots at the very base of the plant), and that it has such a mellow flavor that it is almost impossible to overdo it. Try using green garlic in any recipe calling for garlic. Chop the stalk into rounds, as you would a leek, and then sauté it, stir-fry it, or add it to casseroles. It fairs particularly well in aioli, sauces, and salad dressings. As a general rule, one stalk will have as much flavor as 2 garlic cloves, more or less.

Storage Tips

Stored in a plastic bag in your refrigerator, green garlic should keep well for well over a week.

Nutrition

Garlic is as good as ten mothers, as the saying goes, and garlic's fans are quick to extol its many virtues. 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

In the fall, after we have sorted all of our garlic to select the heads we will use for seed in the next year, we then "pop" the garlic, or separate the heads into individual cloves. This unavoidably leaves us with some smaller cloves which are unlikely to grow into large, desirable heads of garlic; so we set these random small cloves aside and plant them in their own beds, to be harvested the following year as green garlic.