garlic already put up for the season

[flowerbug]

I should read your posts right off, FlowerBug!

Garlic? I bet I couldn't use all the digitS' on 1 hand to count the seasons that I have grown garlic. So, I'm talking about having garlic in 10% or less of my annual gardens.

It isn't that I don't use it. It's just that I use so little and I buy it. Also, I try not to use salt by itself in my cooking. This is a way that I'm limiting salt in my diet. I think, "oh, it has to be in something else ... soy sauce! Garlic salt! Grab that!" I don't know if it's helping ... , we'll see.

Lots of onions each year ... and, I was just saying that shallots make me feel that I have something special . Ground shallots, drenched in lemon juice, frozen?!

Several years ago, I was encouraged by @hoodat to save shallot seed and replant. I had purchased hybrid seed, originally. The plants from my saved seed grew as single bulbs! So. Are these those eschalion (banana) shallots that I have been trying to learn something about? Was that one of the original parents?

I don't expect you to guess what I have in a basket in my garage, FlowerBug . But, from what I have read so far, banana shallots are not supposed to keep as well as the usual French red that I have kept in there for 20+ winters. Imagine, there is no heat and some of those winters it's been 15 below and colder. They do just fine!

Hmmm? shallots frozen in lemon juice or pickled in vinegar, salt and sugar ... that sounds okay. Mmmm! Sounds good.

Steve

we don't salt or pepper anything here. Mom reacts to pepper like it is an allergen and for me it pisses off my digestive system. i love black pepper flavor in some things, so i will use it a little, but most people use it and salt out of habit and that is often way too much for my tastes.

when i was talking about a sweet and sour brine i should have left out the word brine since that often makes people assume salt...

yes, as far as the flavors go, i'm not sure why someone wouldn't enjoy an onion or garlic relish or of course both... it's very good if you really like garlic.

if anyone ever wants bulbulles of what i grow here i can send plenty.

the cloves i plant for the next season's crop are often as big as my thumb. it isn't elephant garlic (that's too wimpy for our tastes). it's an old italian garlic. if you bite a clove it will numb your tongue/gums.

i've also used it to make what is called an Indian (as in asian) Garlic Pickle. that stuff is very yummy too.

some years i've picked 5 gallon buckets full of garlic and half a bucket of garlic scapes/bulbulles (which i bury deep because i don't want them to regrow). i've backed off quite a ways from growing that much garlic. a weeks worth of garlic peeling isn't what i want to do anymore.

the last time i made garlic relish i put up 24 18oz jars.

 

[ninnymary]

I miss growing my own garlic, I gave up on it as the last few years I grew it were very disappointing. I started getting a lot of rot, and it takes such a long time, and having a small garden I put that ground to a better use, yep more beans.

Annette

I gave up on garlic growing too. I only have 3 tiny beds and it was taking up one. I don't need that much for cooking and prefer to buying a couple of heads at a time to keep it fresh. Next spring I'm going to plant more jalapenos for my salsa.

Mary

 

[aftermidnight]

we don't salt or pepper anything here. Mom reacts to pepper like it is an allergen and for me it pisses off my digestive system. i love black pepper flavor in some things, so i will use it a little, but most people use it and salt out of habit and that is often way too much for my tastes.

when i was talking about a sweet and sour brine i should have left out the word brine since that often makes people assume salt...

yes, as far as the flavors go, i'm not sure why someone wouldn't enjoy an onion or garlic relish or of course both... it's very good if you really like garlic.

if anyone ever wants bulbulles of what i grow here i can send plenty.

the cloves i plant for the next season's crop are often as big as my thumb. it isn't elephant garlic (that's too wimpy for our tastes). it's an old italian garlic. if you bite a clove it will numb your tongue/gums.

i've also used it to make what is called an Indian (as in asian) Garlic Pickle. that stuff is very yummy too.

some years i've picked 5 gallon buckets full of garlic and half a bucket of garlic scapes/bulbulles (which i bury deep because i don't want them to regrow). i've backed off quite a ways from growing that much garlic. a weeks worth of garlic peeling isn't what i want to do anymore.

the last time i made garlic relish i put up 24 18oz jars.

I use very little salt when cooking although I do cheat for special things, if hubby wants it salted he has to do it at the table. On the other hand I love course ground black pepper on just about everything, if it was taken away from me I'd be buckets.

Annette

 

[digitS']

@aftermidnight , you are an exotic! Like your choices in the garden.

The potato onion, despite its ridiculously common name of "potato" "onion," there might not have a more unusual variety than the Broome Longkeeper.

Of course, you directed me to a commercial site for Frog Leg shallots. I have even ordered several times from Richters . Since, it is my limited understanding that banana shallots (these guys need to be careful with their silly names! I'm sensitive to things like that ) produce seed. So, I'm wondering why Richters would sell them as bulbs. There might be a good reason for that but I've found shallot seed easy to grow and relatively productive.

@Ridgerunner , you know that there are long & short-day shallot varieties. Here is Southern Exposure Seed on the better choice, I guess. (Realized that I have had the French gray not the red ... names! Gray. Sounds so uninteresting.)

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

No Steve I did not know that. I got the starts from a local Mom 'm Pop gardening store. I did not think to ask them what variety they were or anything about them, it was an impulse purchase that worked out like a lot of my impulses.

I don't plan to grow any next year but armed with this information I may do some research and see if I can come up with a good variety. With onions I'm right in between long and short day territory, I can grow them both and they mature about the same time. Who knows how it will work with shallots.

 

[digitS']

I once knew a gardener in southern Colorado. He was right close to the 4 corners. He wasn't able to grow shallots very well.

Here's something from the food critics, including info on the banana shallot: Knives Out for a Shallot Showdown

British - "a hint of Brazil nut" ? Yeah, that might be ...

A "distinctly ferric kick" ? What??

Steve

 

[flowerbug]

I gave up on garlic growing too. I only have 3 tiny beds and it was taking up one. I don't need that much for cooking and prefer to buying a couple of heads at a time to keep it fresh. Next spring I'm going to plant more jalapenos for my salsa.

Mary

i tell people they can grow it by sticking it along any edge if they are pressed for space. it doesn't get as big when it has competition but it still tastes great.

and if you only need very small amount you can leave the bulb in the ground and never divide it and just use the bulbulles off the top the grow in the scapes (well at least some garlics get them, others flower and do seeds).

for the large garlic cloves i stick in the ground it gets a very healthy scape where the bulbulles will be anywhere from the size of a dime to a quarter, which for many store bought garlics is the size of a clove. that's only good for one year though as if you don't lift it and divide it then it will start getting smaller cloves and bulbulles.

it's all good to me. i pull garlic in early spring to eat it green as i have always had rotten luck growing the straight green onions. cook it up a bit and it is close enough to a green onion that you don't mind at all... it is an extended crop actually in the other direction because you can pull it about any time up until the scapes and tunics start to harden.

shallots don't have enough kick for us. might as well cook tulips... (my brother did this once as he thought a bag of extra tulip bulbs i gave him were onions).

 

[flowerbug]

and since this is a garlic thread, i can post this pic here from one year when the scape made a second scape.

 

[flowerbug]

I miss growing my own garlic, I gave up on it as the last few years I grew it were very disappointing. I started getting a lot of rot, and it takes such a long time, and having a small garden I put that ground to a better use, yep more beans.

Annette

you'll never see me complain about anyone growing more beans!

 

[Nyboy]

and since this is a garlic thread, i can post this pic here from one year when the scape made a second scape.

You will soon learn anything can go in any thread here. Some of us have been know to high jack a thread or two