The mild, delicious flavor of green garlic

[H_Bachman]

One of my favorite herbs to grow is green garlic. Just take some garlic bulbs and plant them in any type of soil. They will soon sprout little green nubs and garlic shoots will grow. Harvest the leaves just above the top of the bulb as you need them; leave the bulb in the ground, as they will grow again and again. The leaves taste like garlic, but they're mild enough to eat raw. I like to snip them up and add them to stirfries or salads for a little extra flavor.

They're not very picky. You can even plant them in the same pots as other plants, and they can take anything from full sun to shade. I've also noticed that plants that have garlic growing with them are less susceptible to fungus and root rot. I know garlic has antimicrobial properties, so I'm thinking their roots might keep plant diseases at bay.

 

[Gina145]

What time of year is a good time to plant them? I tried sticking a whole garlic in a pot once and nothing ever came up. I'm not sure whether it was a case of being overambitious, whether I looked after it incorrectly or whether it was the wrong time of the year.

I'm in the Southern hemisphere so winter is just coming to the end here.

 

[zigs]

You can get Autumn and Spring planting varieties, best to buy seed cloves from a plant nursery, as the shop bought stuff is often sprayed with a growth inhibitor to give it a longer shelf life.

If it grows at all you only get tiny bulbs back from it.

 

[Gina145]

Thanks zigs. Would organic garlic work better than the normal shot bought stuff? When I go to nurseries I tend to get so involved in looking for bonsai potential in their trees that I forget anything else I need there. It's time I started keeping lists of things to do but I'm terribly disorganized.

 

[claudine]

I'll be honest with you, garlic is one of very few plants that I don't enjoy growing. I never eat it, I hate it's smell and its taste, in my opinion it just isn't edible. The plant itself doesn't look to pretty either. But I grow it anyway since my boyfriend loves it and I love him

 

[Gina145]

I can understand what you're saying about the smell, claudine.

Garlic is supposed to have medicinal properties, so I've tried taking supplements from the health shops. The trouble is that even if I buy ones combined with parsley, which is supposed to remove the odor, after taking them for a while I start to feel that the smell of garlic has invaded my body, so I stop taking them. But I do like the taste of garlic, so if the leaves taste milder then I'm hoping that the smell is milder too. That's why I like the idea of growing them instead of buying garlic.

 

[zigs]

Thanks zigs. Would organic garlic work better than the normal shot bought stuff? When I go to nurseries I tend to get so involved in looking for bonsai potential in their trees that I forget anything else I need there. It's time I started keeping lists of things to do but I'm terribly disorganized.

It should, but you still probably won't know the variety or if its spring or autumn planting. In the uk we tend to use varieties that have been bred for this climate, would imagine your climate is hotter than ours, but if you can find locally grown organic then its worth a shot.

Plant some now & see how it does, then do an autumn sowing of the same stuff & see how that does over winter.

Reason for overwintering it is so it can make good root growth rather than top growth, it then gets away quickly in the spring.

Harvest as the leaves start turning yellow, if you leave it in too long you'll have to dig the bed over to find it, the top growth completely disappears.

 

[blueeyes]

I love garlic and use it in most of my cooking. This sounds like a great idea and something I could grow on my balcony. I do admit the smell of garlic can be overpowering with the amount I eat so I'm hoping that the little green nubs will be less offensive...

 

[ChanellG]

I have one bulb in progress and several cloves I sprouted this past spring. I love garlic and I have used the greens as a garlic substitute when I've run out. If the clove I planted at the end of the fall last year actually turns into a bulb I will be over the moon! The leaves are really small so It's hard to tell what is going on under the soil, but at least it is still alive, lol.