“Gardening is often done mostly by trial and error, and sometimes attempting something new can be incredibly rewarding.” With these words, Kristin Graves won my heart. They remind me of some other words of gardening wisdom I once read: “You are always a beginner in the garden.”
Were it not for an inner need to “go where no gardener has gone before” and challenge conventional horticultural wisdom, no one would have ever planted avocado trees in Temecula, no one would have cultivated pistachio trees near Bakersfield, and no one would have thought of growing dates in the Coachella Valley.
I read Graves’ wise observation in her newly published book, “The Garlic Companion,” in the context of the two types of garlic and their climate ranges. There is softneck garlic, which is what we grow in California and wherever winters are mild; it is recommended for growing in USDA climate zones 6 and above. And then there is hardneck garlic which is meant for growing where winters are cold, in zones 5 and below. Keep in mind that where climate zones are concerned, the lower the number, the colder the winter. It’s easy to remember which type of garlic belongs to which climate since hardneck garlic is hardier, meaning it is meant for growing where winters are cold.
Graves has developed part of her family’s farm in Alberta, Canada, into a garlic-growing paradise, where more than 75,000 hardneck bulbs are annually harvested. Still, her “attempting something new” encourages cold-climate gardeners to try their luck with softneck garlic.
Graves had no intention of being a garlic farmer. She was a radiology technician when she experienced a setback, whereupon she “turned to the farm and the land to heal.” There is something enormously healing about growing plants. As a plaque on my desk attests: “Gardening is cheaper than therapy (and you get tomatoes).”
Of course, growing garlic is not only emotionally healing but physically beneficial when you eat what you grow as well. The medicinal ingredient in garlic is allicin. It fends off infections, lowers cholesterol, boosts the immune system, and may even fight certain types of cancer. Yet when fresh cloves of garlic are cooked whole, their allicin content is diminished. However, if you chop garlic and let it sit for 10 minutes prior to cooking, the allicin released within the cloves will be preserved despite cooking. Graves writes that, throughout history, garlic has also been considered a powerful aphrodisiac, so much so that Catholic nuns and Buddhist monks were prohibited from consuming it.
If you buy garlic in the grocery store, it is invariably softneck garlic. The reason for this is that softneck garlic stores reliably for up to one year, while hardneck garlic stores for only six months. When growing garlic, softneck is also preferred for braiding purposes. As its name implies, the stems of softneck garlic are flexible so that braiding is easy. Braiding itself is done for storage purposes since braids are classically suspended in the air, where air circulating around the bulbs keeps them fresh. Braided garlic can also be used for decorative purposes.
There are two notable characteristics of hardneck garlic that softneck garlic lacks, incentivizing us to grow it here even though it is more at home in northern regions. Hardneck garlic has uniquely fascinating hoop-like shoots known as scapes. These shoots are not only amusing to look at, but are used in recipes such as “beer-battered zucchini blossoms with garlic scape filling“ and “garlic scape cornbread muffins.” Their taste is milder than that of garlic cloves and is said to combine the flavors of scallions, garlic, and chives. Graves devotes more than 70 pages of her book to culinary creations that include garlic.
Other than scapes, hardneck garlic is notable for the bulbils or mini-bulbs that it forms on scapes when they are left unharvested. Depending on the hardneck variety, as many as 200 bulbils can cluster on a scape. They can be planted in the garden but you may have to wait several years until they form a sizable bulb. For this reason, hardneck garlic, like softneck, is typically propagated from cloves, although bulbils can always be utilized in stir fry and other cooked dishes.
Fall is the best time of year to plant garlic. The reason is that, in the manner of deciduous tree fruits and nuts as well as many flowering bulbs, a dose of winter chill is necessary to produce the desired result. Nevertheless, If you insist on planting softneck garlic — which does not need much winter cold to flourish — in the spring, you should only do so after placing the bulbs in your refrigerator 40 days prior to planting to mimic the effect of winter cold. If you wanted to plant hardneck garlic here, you would need to vernalize it – meaning, expose it to cold – in a most serious way. That is, you would need to place bulbs in the refrigerator for several months to replicate the cold winters to which they are accustomed before planting them out in the garden.
To plant garlic cloves, separate them from one another immediately prior to planting. This will keep them hydrated prior to placement. Cloves should be planted only 1 and 1/2 inches deep, pointed end up, with six inches of separation between cloves. (An aside: garlic is a combination of two Old English words, gar = spear, referencing its pointed tip, and lic = leek, a close relative.) Cover the area with four to five inches of mulch to retain soil moisture.
As for harvesting, you will know the time is right when the green tops/shoots begin to dry out and flop over at some time during the summer. Remove a sample bulb with a trowel. If it is fat with fully developed cloves, harvest the rest of your crop. Lay the bulbs on the soil surface of the bed in which they grew and let them dry there for one week. Now clean the bulbs, cut off their roots and tops, and allow them to dry out for another three weeks in a dry area with good air circulation. Some garlic growers, following harvest, hang their garlic by its green foliage for the entire four-week desiccation period since this extends storage life.
You can grow garlic, just as you can grow potatoes, from store-bought produce. However, specially grown seed garlic, like seed potatoes, is likely to give you a more desirable crop than that which grows from grocery fare. Still, some gardeners swear that, where garlic is concerned, excellent crops will grow from what you find at Ralphs. Seed garlic is simply garlic whose cloves (known as seeds) readily grow into garlic bulbs just a seed potatoes are potatoes that will produce a clutch of quality potatoes more reliably than store bought tubers.
California native of the week: I must be blessed, because a California native I had never seen nor heard of previously started growing in my garden this spring. And it’s a beauty. Commonly known as silver wormwood, its botanical name is Artemisia ludoviciana, with the species epithet meaning “from Louisiana.” Wait a minute, you will ask, how can a California native come from Louisiana? The answer is that it’s native to Louisiana, too. Moreover, it is native to most of the United States, with an Indigenous presence in Canada and Mexico as well. This is one of the most successful of our natives, judging from its many subspecies and varieties, 17 of which are listed on the website of Calflora (calflora.org), a nonprofit venture that provides data on California natives.
Silver wormwood has been used for a plethora of medicinal purposes by Indigenous tribes throughout the North American continent. It is also used for smudging rituals. The word “smudging” has the opposite meaning from what you might think since a smudge is a dark spot or stain. But smudging in a ritual context means “making a smokey fire” whose purpose is to cleanse a place, an object, or a person (both physically and spiritually). Since silver wormwood expands its garden presence through underground rhizomes, you have the choice of keeping it in a limited area or just letting it take over a large expanse. You can propagate it by digging up rhizomes with stems and leaves attached for transplanting to other garden spots, or by dividing plants through their root mass. You can find silver wormwood at the Theodore Payne Foundation in Sun Valley (theodorepayne.org) and at the Tree of Life Nursery in San Juan Capistrano (californianativeplants.com).
If you have a story about garlic or any other bulb to tell, send it along to joshua@perfectplants.com. Your questions, comments, garden conundrums, challenges, and successes are also welcome.