Garlic, How do I love Thee?

Sweet baby Jesus*, do I love me some garlic twelve ways from sunday.  I'll eat three raw crushed gloves in a plate of pasta and not bat an eye (a habit that basically turns me into the equivalent of a federal Superfund Cleanup site for the next four hours), and a half dozen cloves go into most things that I preserve.  (Peppers, pickles, etc.)  Also, sautéed garlic is a staple that deserves to be on the lowest rung of the now-defunct food pyramid, in my humble opinion: eight or more helpings a day!

Okay, I'm exaggerating, but I really do love the stuff.  It's good for you, it's delicious raw or cooked or pickled, and it's truly the easiest plant to grow.  You poke a clove into the ground in October, and then come back the next July and scoop out the matured bulb.  At least around here, I never bother to water or feed it--I just make sure that the bed that it's in is richly amended with compost, and let the rains do the rest.  My grandfather used to keep a jar of pickled garlic cloves by his bedside (from bulbs that he grew himself, of course), and whenever he would feel heart pains, he'd eat a couple; he claimed that the pains would go away quickly.  Raw garlic is also, in my experience, a hangover prevention: if you've enjoyed the new year's celebration too much, swallow three cloves of garlic and you'll wake up tired and stinky, but not hurting.

Half of the 2011 garlic crop, drying

The first year that I was serious about gardening (2008), I planted about twelve softneck garlics in unamended heavy clay soil.  My reward for that excessive inattention was a crop of bean-sized bulbs with no flavor.  So last year, I devoted a 4'x4' bed to garlic, ordered hardneck porcelain seed garlic from Filaree Farm, and made sure that the soil was fluffy and rich.  As a result, I have almost 100 fat bulbs, each 2" across and sporting six or seven large cloves each.  I also enjoyed the benefit of ~100 delicious garlic scapes in the spring!

Nice 2" bulbs

For 2012, I have lost my mind.  Having just harvested the bounty above, I realized that I have more than enough garlic to save for seed and store for cooking over the next year, but alas, I've already ordered more seed garlic from Filaree.  Approximately three times more than I planted this year, enough to fill a 4'x12' raised bed.  This means that next year, I am going to witness the Garlic Apocaplyse.  Is it possible to have too much garlic?  We shall see.  Whatever the answer, I am never going to have to order seed garlic again....

And now a gratuitous picture of Finn with a dab of yellow paint on his kitten snout:

Just because

UPDATE:  The garlic has been drying in the garage for a couple of hours now, and OH MY GOD does the garage smell amazing!


*Did you know that, strictly speaking, uttering the name "Jesus" is not "taking the lord's name in vain", according to christian texts and history?  His name in aramaic was "Yeshua", which translates in english to "Joshua".