Garlic is one of our most favorite crops to grow (and eat!) on the farm--for its beauty, its flavor, and for the way it serves as an indicator of our farming year and the passage of time.  

The garlic growing in our field right now was the very last thing to be planted in the fall of 2018--it closed our field season.  This spring, it was the first crop to emerge, sprouting from its thick mulch in March, withstanding the cold, snowy, and then rainy spring that followed.  The garlic grew tall and robust despite it all--it looks amazing!

This week, we are harvesting the "scapes" of the garlic plants, those curvy shoots that emerge right around the summer solstice.  They tell us that the plant is starting to bulb, and our garlic harvest is about  a month away.  Each year there can be as many as 4 weeks of variation as to when the garlic matures, but this relationship of scape to bulb has always been true--a great indicator of the harvest ahead.   

What's even better, they are delicious!!  Scapes offer a fresh garlic taste to just about anything--use in place of bulb garlic until the bulbs arrive.

Enjoy garlic season!