AgriCulture bloggers Peter Davies and Mark Scherzer are the owners of Turkana Farms in Germantown, NY. This week, Peter writes:
My grandmother in Wales always insisted, with great disdain, that eating garlic was “vulgar,” which was in those days a generally held opinion in Britain. So finding myself at the Hudson Valley Garlic Festival in Saugerties these past few years has been a real revelation as I strolled past booths selling garlic soups, garlic jams, garlic coffee, garlic candy, garlic ice cream, and all manner of fast foods heavily laced with garlic. Of course, I had pretty well gotten over my grandmother’s garlic prejudice years before, during my three-year stay in Turkey, where I enjoyed such dishes as lamb stew with 40 cloves of garlic and found the presence of garlic enhancing so much of the cuisine. The importance of garlic in this Near Eastern world is suggested by an ancient Islamic myth describing how, as Satan exited the Garden of Eden, garlic sprouted out of his left footprints and onions out of his right.
Since Mark and I established Turkana Farms, my relationship to garlic has intensified considerably. At the Saugerties Garlic Festival we learned from regional garlic growers who raise a whole range of garlic varieties about the differences between hardneck and softneck varieties as well as the characteristics of French, German, and Italian red, white, and purple varieties. Garlic, we realized, came in more different varieties than we had imagined. We plunged in, as is our habit, purchasing garlic bulbs for seeding. Garlic growers typically start their garlic crop by planting cloves (the asexual method), not seeds (the sexual method).
Late last fall (the recommended planting season for garlic), we planted forty pounds of garlic cloves, chiefly the soft neck German red variety, supplemented with left over cloves from the previous season in the hard neck German and Italian varieties. This planting took up three large, heavily composted round beds in our vegetable garden, which we then heavily mulched for winter protection and as a spring weed deterrent. The exceptionally mild winter and very early warm spring temperatures seem to have accelerated the development of the garlic this time around. Instead of early July, it very well may be mid-June when we take up the bulbs and dry them for storage.
From last July to the present we have supplied our own considerable garlic needs (choosing flavor over British manners) and managed to sell a good quantity to our various farm customers. Once garlic has been properly dried it has a life of about six months before it begins to powder or mold, so our storage record this time was above average. With what we have planted this time we expect to have a considerable surplus to sell to our customers. The advantage of the soft neck variety (the kind you see decoratively braided into garlic ropes) is that it can be stored for a longer period than the hard necked variety (so-called because a stick-like stalk runs through the garlic bulb). As is my wont, it is not enough just to learn to grow a plant -- my compulsive historical, academic bent invariably takes me off into learning more about the plant’s history, characteristics, and uses. Hence the following, some of it gleaned from Wikipedia: Allium sativum, commonly known as garlic, has an ancient history that can be traced as far back as around 2,000 BC in China, and back to the building of the Giza pyramids in Egypt. Its place of origin is not entirely certain but the consensus seems to be somewhere in Central Asia. Garlic is mentioned in the Old Testament and the Talmud, and commented on in the Classical texts by Hippocrates, Galen, Pliny the Elder, and Dioscorides. Pliny, in his Natural History, called garlic the “rustic’s theriac” —-- that is, “cure all,” and recorded for posterity a long list of its medicinal uses.
Folkloric traditions transferred garlic’s medical prophylactic qualities into a number of interesting superstitions, the one most familiar to us: the efficacy of garlic in warding off vampires. To placate Hecate, goddess of the moon, earth, and the infernal regions and associated with sorcery and witchcraft, the ancient Greeks customarily placed garlic as her supper on piles of stones at crossroads. According to Pliny, Egyptians used garlic and onions in their oaths to invoke the deities. In India, a common custom down to the present is to hang garlic, lemon, and red chillies at the door to ward off evil. Scientific studies have found that garlic has definite beneficial effects on human health. Countries where garlic is heavily used in traditional cuisine have been found to have a lower prevalence of cancer. Some studies, still in the early stages, suggest possible cardiovascular benefits. Garlic has been found to reduce platelet aggregation and hyperlipidemia. It is also alleged to regulate blood sugar levels. And it was used in both World War I and II to prevent gangrene. Research is still ongoing into the various medicinal uses of garlic.
As growers of garlic, meaning that we deal not just with the bulb but the entire plant, we have become aware of other culinary uses of garlic. These uses seem to derive from a pre-supermarket world in which there would have been a search for local early spring greens. For instance, scallion-sized immature garlic plants (the bulb has not yet separated into cloves) can be pulled; at this stage is called “green garlic,” a now fashionable tasty ingredient in omelets and salads. As an example, see a recent recipe in the New York Times for frittata with green garlic.
In its more mature stage, the hardneck variety puts forth at its top a thin, stem-like curlicue (actually the closed flower bud) known as a “scape.” When braised in the manner of asparagus or cut up raw for salads, scapes have a mild garlic flavor, and they have a nice crunchy texture. When the scapes open into flowers, called “bulbils," they can be used as a decorative addition to a spring salad, supplying a mild garlic flavor. However, growers generally snip the scapes before they reach the bulbil stage in order to direct the energy of the plant to the bulb rather than to seeds, thus producing larger bulbs. Even the garlic leaves, I was surprised to learn, have a use, dried and ground for garlic powder. By chance I came on one of the most unusual uses of garlic when I was leading a mini-seminar of students on a six week tour of Greece and Turkey in the mid 1970s. We were on a car ferry crossing the Gulf of Corinth, just having left Delphi and on our way to Olympia. Since it was February, we were gathered at a table in the saloon, taking shelter from the wind, when a dark, wild-haired, burly Greek joined us. Despite his limited and virtually incomprehensible English, and our total lack of Greek, he attempted to strike up a conversation.
In his intense, animated way he began explaining something using a tiny box of matches as his prop. He would slide the match box as he spoke across the table, then began tipping it from side to side slightly, and then increasingly rocking it, and finally very violently, until the matchbox turned over. He had to do this a number of times before some of us exclaimed: “Revolution!” He stopped, and moving closer, smiled conspiratorially. It suddenly clicked in my mind that Greece was under the heavy-handed rule of the Greek Junta, and that there were many armed uprisings taking place throughout the country. It was then I realized who we were with. But it was not until we docked, and he drove off the car ferry in a huge dump truck piled high with tons of loose garlic bulbs that I realized what his revolutionary function was. What better place to conceal guns, ammunition, and explosives, than at the bottom of a truck bed piled with garlic. In revolutionary Greece, garlic for a time seems to have become a smuggler’s dream. —Peter Davies
