Maryland Garden Girl

It is a perfect day to finally plant garlic.  This may be one of my all time favorite things to do; it is both easy and productive. Last year I planted soft neck garlic that I bought at the farmer’s market.  I completely forgot about it and then, in the spring, it sent up shoots and by July we had garlic.  And this was not just any garlic, it was fragrant and plump and a beautiful cream color.  So, of course, I decided to plant garlic again.  I wasn’t sure if I could just plant grocery store garlic (I have since been told that, indeed, I could.)  So I asked my father where he gets his garlic and, voila, his extra garlic cloves appeared in the mail.  He gave me two types of hard neck garlic to plant, “music” and “asian tempest.”  ”Music” is supposed to produce a large harvest with “big cloves that are easy to peel.”  It has a taste that “is a medium hot, true garlic flavor that lasts for a long time.”  ”Asian tempest” (I wonder if my father bought it for the name alone….) has a “raw fiery bite” that “mellows to a full, sweet flavor when cooked.”  Both of these garlics are supposedly easy to peel and keep for 8 months.  I have grown soft neck because there is absolutely no maintenance, whereas hard neck garlic need their “scape” cut off in the spring. (which is why you often find garlic scapes for sale in springtime farmer’s markets.)  Dad claimed that hard neck garlic stores longer, but the very instructions that he sent me said “Hardneck garlics typically have a shorter storage life than softnecks.”  Oh well. I am, honestly, amazed at the variety of garlic that can be planted-pages of choices.  If this year’s garlic crop is as easy and satisfying as last year’s, I will expand into even more variety.