'It would be a sad world without garlic'

The best time for us to plant garlic is the second week of October, but I never seem to get to it. I'm planting mine right now and if you love garlic, put some in the ground.
It's one of the easiest crops to grow and the details of planting are in the video below.

Find garlic locally at a farmers market or at a nursery. I bought the garlic above from a local farmer. You can still find garlic, but you'll have to search. Don't use supermarket garlic, it might not be hardy and could be sprayed with something that retards sprouting.

Try Janoski's Farm and Greenhouse in Clinton, but call first: (724) 899-3458.  Chapon's Greenhouse in Baldwin might have some: (412) 881-1520. Try your local nursery, too.

All you do is split up the cloves and plant each one three inches down, six inches apart in good soil. Next spring the greens will sprout; harvest them lightly. Then the seed head comes up, it's called a scape. It must be removed; the plant will then put all its energy into the bulb.

Here's a recipe for the scapes. One interesting thing about the seed head is that even when removed from the plant, it will continue to grow. It forms bulbets that taste just like a full-sized head. I always leave a few scapes in the garden to enjoy the bulbets.

In July when more than 50 percent of the foliage is brown, the bulbs are ready to pick.

Harvest the bulbs and leave the green attached, then hang them in a warm dry place for three weeks; this cures the bulbs. They will last longer with the foliage attached. Mine go well into winter, then if they eventually start to rot. I peel them and put them in a food processor with olive oil and freeze the mix in ice cube trays. It retains the flavor, but the texture is gone.

Garlic from the garden is something I can't live without. Like anything from the garden, it's different from what's available in stores.

My dear friend Johno Prascak is an incredible artist. In his kitchen is this saying painted on a cupboard, "It would be a sad world without garlic." Nothing has ever been truer.

{worldnow}5287046{/worldnow}