Garlic fun (while it lasted)

I have posted previously about our first garlic “crop”, which was really planted as an afterthought last fall.

Well…..
When I came home yesterday the air outside the side door was full of a strong but sweet garlic aroma.

Since the kitchen exhaust fan is under the side porch, I always have a preview of serious kitchen activity before I enter the house. The nose knows, and this time was no different.

On the counter these a garlic massacre had occurred and the clove corpses were collected in a half dozen small piles. Mrs cohutt was in a terrific mood and showed no remorse for what she had done; in fact, she showed signs of a “food high” of the type that usually appears only after a 3rd piece of Godiva (dark chocolate only please).

She had roasted the entire balance of the garlic harvest, approximately 2 dozen heads, and was in the process of bagging and freezing the delicious garlic goo. It was evident that at least one clove from each head had been sampled (placed within the dubious domain of “quality control”.)

Roasted garlic good is in fact delicious and it is supposed to freeze very well; she had actually had me reserve the heads I wanted to keep for the next mega batch of tomato sauce as well as the two largest heads for replanting next fall. I checked and my reserve is still there, so I won’t hold a grudge.

In hindsight I think I mostly harvested slightly early and left some additional “girth” in the ground by doing so. Why?

On her “A Way to Garden” site, Margaret Roach has put up a very good garlic harvesting post here, and this confirms my suspicions on my own. Her site is worth a visit if you are remotely interested in this wort of stuff. She is a professional so it isn’t a cohutt website, it is a real one. 🙂