Garlic Harvest Time

The first of the garlic harvest is in and my front porch smells like an Italian restaurant. This is the first time I have ever grown garlic. No one that I knew back on Long Island grew it, maybe because none of our root vegetables ever came out nice. With the raised beds I do very well with root vegetables so I gratefully accepted a bag of cloves to plant last fall from my neighbor Patty.  She told me the folklore of planting garlic: Plant on Columbus Day (around October 12) and harvest on July 4th.  Well it is about two weeks early for the harvest, but the tops are brown and falling over which is a sure sign it's time to pull them up. I had to use my hoe to dig into the ground a bit to get the bulbs out hidden under the earth. Some of the tops had already rotted off. After pulling them out, I put them in a big bucket, then sat on the porch and cut off the tops and bottoms. I used a stiff bristle scrub brush to scrub off the outer layer of skin on the bulbs, which also gets the dirt off.  Then I put them in my trusty roasting pan and left the whole batch out on the front porch to dry. With today's high temperatures expected near 100 degrees Fahrenheit, it should help them dry out. I have mesh bags in the garage saved from the fall tulip and daffodil planting and I will store the batch of cloves to plant this fall in one of the bags.

Garlic has such a long history and so many myths around it that I decided just for fun to look up some of the folklore.  All of the information below comes from a website called American Folklore.

Did you know that...

• The ancient Egyptians swore oaths on garlic much the same way we swear an oath on the Bible. A group in lower Egypt actually worshiped garlic bulbs.
• Egyptian slaves were given a clove of garlic a day to eat. The belief was that it would ward off illness, which isn't so far fetched after all. Today, a lot of research shows that garlic lowers blood cholesterol and  enhances immune system health.
• When King Tut's tomb was excavated, archeologists found cloves of garlic scattered around the tomb.
• The Prophet Mohammed equates garlic with Satan. When the Devil was cast out of Eden,  his left foot touched the earth, and garlic sprang up, while onion emerged from the footprint of his right foot.
• Garlic has always been thought to keep evil spirits away, and in many cultures too. Koreans ate garlic before going through mountain passes to keep both tigers and evil spirits away. The Greeks placed garlic at the crossroads for Hecate, who would also keep evil spirits away.  Greek midwives hung cloves of garlic in birthing chambers to keep evil spirits away from mother and child.  And of course, garlic wards off vampires.

So I am safe. With that big tray of garlic on the front porch, an evil spirit dares not cross my threshold today!

Now what to do with all this garlic? See my cooking and recipe blog, Recipes from the Garden, for my 20 minute shrimp scampi recipe - plenty of fresh garlic, fast, and under $2 per serving!