Garlic Primer

Alright. 4th of July and a celebration of the year being half over. Which I cannot believe that we are already here. Anyway, time stops for no man, woman or Organic berry. So we carry-on.

And in celebration of the 4th, we have a colorful theme for this week, good ole red, white, and blue. Strawberries/beets, nectarines, and blueberries. Thank gawd for blueberries too, because there ain’t much naturally blue things in the produce world. I also love them so that helps.

You might be looking at your box and saying “What the heck is this plant that LPO put in here this week?” Yes, it is a garlic plant. Not a head, not a clove, but the whole darn thing. I remember my fascination 10 years ago when I learned of how simple and beautiful a garlic plant is. From a clove you get a plant, and at the base of that plant, an entire head of garlic. Truly the law of exponential growth. 10 to 100 in one year.

But I want you guys to see it. Look at it. And exam the life of a garlic before you smash it up and throw it into your sauté pan. So take a quick minute with me to look at it.

The roots are pretty simple to see and what is important to notice is that they are fairly inefficient. There are no root hairs (which increase the surface area and ability for garlic to take up nutrients) so they are considered “poor feeders.” And the roots are shallow. Maybe only 6” deep.

Next is the tops or leaves or power generator for the whole plant. The leaves are not that big but they are not trying to uptake energy for a very large plant so it works. It is my rule of thumb that I kind of keep tucked away, but you always want to look at the energy source for the plants. The larger the greenery, the larger the plant. Think about how many leaves a Cottonwood has out there soaking in the sunrays.

So think of these small garlic leaves as a funnel, soaking in the goodness of the sun and then needing a place to store it. Just then the head starts to form under the surface of the soil.

The head then stores those rays in the form of carbohydrates under the protective papery barrier we know as the garlic’s skin.

Here is the other thing I love about the garlic leaves and then we will move on to more thrilling, nail-biting, garlic factoids. But the leaves are very waxy. This helps it grow in wet climates where other plants (like tomatoes) would perish under wet leaves. So the waxy surface repels water and helps the plant avoid disease.

Lastly on to the head and cloves themselves. The meat of the garlic contains the perfect water ratio to a) not rot in the ground and b) provide life for the following plant. If a garlic clove dehydrates it will not produce a plant for the following year. So it relies on that seed clove to provide enough water to at least establish its roots.

But at the same time, water is a key ingredient for decomposition. So how do the two meet in the middle? The garlic clove offsets that presence of water by filling its cloves with anti-fungal and anti-viral compounds. So it can store while fighting off the tendency to decompose. And if that is not amazing, then I don’t know what is? The natural world finds a way.

This is the reason people use raw garlic to fight disease and fungi (hey I’m a fun guy) in their bodies. But careful with the raw garlic because it can seriously be too much on the unsuspecting stomach. Start slowly if you try this.

That is it for mi amigo garlic. Feel free to use it, or store the plant in your kitchen until a further time.

Lastly, a reminder that we will be starting our LPO tomatoes next week. This will be the earliest that we have ever started tomatoes. A serious shout out to the effectiveness of our passive solar hoop houses in the South Valley. Mark my words that these structures will be the future of sustainable ag here in NM. I can already see the next two going up this fall….

Happy 4th compatriots, Farmer Monte