The Garlic Farmer

Colin Boswell

September is a beautiful and underrated month. A high proportion of usually sunny days with the light coming in at the same angle that makes March another extraordinarily lit month.

As soon as this year’s crop was out of the ground we started to make plans for the 2010 garlic crop. Rainfall has been sufficient to moisten the ground and make ploughing conditions ideal. The field we are using this year had a heavy crop of milling wheat harvested at the end of July.

We now plough in the stubble and fertilise and prepare it to plant the garlic cloves.

First in the ground is the Elephant garlic, all planted by hand as no planter can place the cloves that weigh ¼ to ½ lb each the right way up just under the ground. Within a week their massive root system is probing into the soil and drawing on all the nutrients and moisture which will hopefully produce monster bulbs next June for the first part of the garlic harvest as Green Garlic, also referred to as Wet Garlic.

Eschalote grise follows, the still undiscovered shallot of the mountain slopes of Northern Afghanistan. Small, intense bulbs that bleed white milk when cut – perfection chopped on fresh oysters. It sounds so much better in its French guise rather than ‘grey shallot’, the direct English translation. Again, hand planted for best results in June, each set produces at least 15 shallots on top of the ground.

Our first true garlic planting comes towards the end of the month with Early Wight, the early purple garlic that gives us such welcome bulbs in the middle of the asparagus season in May. Originating from China, like most Chinese garlic, it tends to crop earlier than Mediterranean and other types. Fresh and zingy in taste in May it is at its best immediately after harvest. There are too many other good garlic to follow to try and conserve it.

You may well find my recent trek to the Northern Turkey in search for Allium Longicuspis, "The Mother of all Garlic" of some interest. Click here to find out more (This will open a new window on YouTube).