I’ve written before about the difference in my two garlic beds. I planted Inchelium Red garlic last October as usual, but this time I split the crop into my two fire-ring beds. One bed had a cover crop of cilantro in with the garlic, and those bulbs grew tall and green and fat - and they are ‘curing’ in place now, without irrigation, filling out and waiting for harvest in early June. In the other bed, the garlic was alone, without a cover crop, and it didn’t do as well. The bulbs were short and measly, and didn’t seem to be getting any bigger. I decided to harvest it early and use it as green garlic. However, I couldn’t use it all at once, so I thought I might try to find a way to preserve it, long-term.
‘Green’ garlic is simply immature, taken out of the ground before the bulbs grow to a typical size. Interestingly, I discovered that many of the bulbs had already ‘headed up’ - that is, grown individual cloves, which you can see from the cross-section picture at the top of this post - but they were smaller than normal. However, many of the bulbs were simply one swollen clove, and had not yet headed up. Regardless of their size or development, I cut the green stalk off each one (which you can also use like scallions or chives) and let the small bulbs dry out on a paper towel inside for a couple of weeks. They were dirty, but as soon as they dried out, I could rub off the outer dirt and skin and reveal the clean, small bulbs underneath.
Then it was just a matter of peeling each one. Green garlic, being immature, doesn’t get all papery like mature garlic does; this means the peels are still quite moist and easy to take off. I decided to make a puree of the cloves with olive oil, and freeze them in cubes to use in cooking later. You cannot store garlic in oil in the fridge, because of the risk of botulism. The USDA Center for Food Preservation recommends storing garlic in oil in the freezer. Here is their blurb about that:
“Garlic-in-Oil
Research performed by the National Center for Home Food Preservation confirmed that mixtures of garlic in oil stored at room temperature are at risk for the development of botulism.
Garlic-in-oil should be made fresh and stored in the refrigerator at 40°F or lower for no more than 4 days. It may be frozen for long term storage for up to several months. Package in glass freezer jars or plastic freezer boxes, leaving ½-inch headspace. Label, date and freeze.”
Blending the garlic with oil was easy, and it made a pretty yellow puree, which I then decanted into an ice cube tray and put in the freezer. This amount yielded only 7 large cubes. Granted, they are pungent and will certainly pack a punch in any recipe. How handy to be able to take a cube out of the freezer, toss it in the frying pan, and have a lovely flavored oil in which to cook a mess of greens, or meat, or eggs. They could also be defrosted to make salad dressing (though it would be strongly-flavored!).
Nothing we grow in the garden should go to waste. There is always a use for it, and if not in the kitchen, it can be fed to livestock or added to the compost pile, where it goes back to feeding the next crop.