The Great Garlic Experiment

Our family loves a farmers market. My toddler loves picking out produce, bread, and snacks she can eat immediately, and my partner and I love discovering new fruits and veggies. This past spring at the farmers market we discovered garlic scapes and green garlic, and we've had them on the brain since. 

Enter: the Great Garlic Experiment of 23/24

To be able to harvest both garlic scapes and green garlic, we quickly learned that we would need to plant both hardneck and softneck varieties. Both varieties are planted in late fall in our region, and in the spring, hardneck garlic varieties sprout delicious garlic scapes for harvest. Green garlic is harvested in the spring when farmers thin their softneck variety garlic fields. This year I'll be experimenting with California softneck garlic and Siberian hardneck garlic. 

The next challenge will be selecting a garden bed. While we'll be planting in late fall (4-6 weeks before first frost), we won't be harvesting the mature garlic until next summer. I'll have both my winter and spring gardens in that time, so I want to choose a bed I'm ok to dedicate for that long. 

In a few weeks, we'll be readying our garden bed to plant those garlic cloves scab side down and pointy side up to launch our first garlic experiment. Fingers-crossed, and we'll keep you updated!

Garlic scape by grongar is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

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