Green Garlic

We have been blessed with warm days in the 60's this November, and have been scrambling to take advantage of it by planting as much green garlic as we can before the ground freezes solid for winter.

Mature green garlic from spring harvest

"Green garlic" is simply the leafy, immature stage of the garlic bulbs used for cooking. When these bulbs are planted in the fall and covered with a light mulch of shredded fall leaves and grass clippings, they spend winter putting out roots and little, if any, top growth. When spring temperatures start warming up, however, the bulbs send up a leafy green stalk that resembles scallions, but with a pronounced garlic flavor. Our chefs love them!

Garlic cloves planted in a furrow. Note how close together they are- since they will be harvested as young green garlic, they don't need to be spaced as far apart as if they were being planted to mature into garlic heads.

Phil covers the furrow with soils and dusts dolomitic limestone, greensand and rock phoshate in each row- organic soil minerals. He will then cover them with the grass clippings and shredded leaf mulch shown to the right so they won't emerge from "frost heave" during winter.