July 17th, 2024
What’s in your share?
Carrots
White Sweet Spanish Onions
Basil
Zucchini
Fresh Hardneck Garlic*
Eggplant (if you didn’t get it last week)
Shishito Peppers (if you didn’t get them last week)
Cherry Tomatoes
*Fresh Garlic - we dug the first of four beds of garlic yesterday. This was the first season that we did not water the garlic once due to the rain. The garlic in your share is super fresh! The skin has not dried and it is not meant to store. It’s meant to be eaten within a few weeks, and it will be a joy to peel because they skin has not dried and shrink wrapped itself around the cloves.
Eggplant - check out the eggplant page from last week
It’s hard to know where to begin, for the story of garlic is much like the story of all beings; there is no clear beginning and no clear end. Let’s take the seed. The seed for the upcoming season is saved from the biggest, best looking bulbs from the current season’s harvest. While it may be tempting to distribute such attractive and therefore, “marketable” garlic, we must stash it aside to select for the desirable garlicy traits we hope to preserve on our land on for the people who it nourishes. Garlic seed grown on our farm is certainly going to be the most resilient in the conditions our land provides.
Each clove (the individually wrapped pieces that make up a bulb) is a seed that turns into an entire garlic plant. Each fall, we plant the garlic by hand in the designated beds, mulching with a 6-8 inch layer of organic straw. The seed will need to make it through the winter without rotting or freezing. In ideal conditions, the garlic will get a nice head start with the fall rains, and lay dormant over the winter to warm up and start sprouting in the spring.
All throughout the spring, as we’re busily prepping and planting the spring and summer crops, the garlic will slowly grow, above ground and below. Just as the season of bounty begins and the harvest of tomatoes, summer squash, cucumbers, peas, and beans become an every day routine, the garlic also needs to be pulled, and a space for curing it needs to be prepared.
When the garlic is pulled from the ground it is moist and alive. After it is gently moved from the field (it bruises easily and bruised garlic does not store well) we lay it out to dry in our propagation greenhouse that was once filled with spring seedlings. The greenhouse is covered with a shade cloth, to prevent direct sunlight from burning the tender flesh of the cloves, even though a layer of protective skin covers it. Air circulation is key, especially in such a humid environment, so we keep fans on for a couple days straight. After about 3 weeks of sitting in the warm, dry(ish) space, the garlic is ready to be cleaned and graded. Here is where the story starts to repeat.
We select the biggest bulbs for seed, and determine what to do with the rest. Providing garlic for our CSA is a huge priority, because correctly cured and stored garlic can last until the first garlic harvest of the upcoming season. We decide which bulbs are marketable, meaning they have no damage and will store well. If they have insect or water damage, they will not store, so we salvage what we can and eat them ourselves, often pickling, fermenting, or drying them into garlic powder. We will store the garlic (seed and market) in our walk-in cooler for the rest of the winter, keeping the temperature just above freezing. All of us will eat from this stash until the 2025 garlic harvest!
Tuesday crew cutting and cleaning some garlic. Photo by Ali