Planting Garlic

California Late White Garlic

"It smells like stew." That was the best description of garlic I've ever heard, and it came from one of my 7-year old students. We were exploring the color, shape, and aroma of garlic as we prepared for planting a row of the pungent staple in our small school garden, and I was struggling to give context to this unfamiliar food. Unlike, other vegetables like carrots and potatoes that children often encounter whole, garlic is the seldom seen, but invaluable, stage-hand that makes almost every meal savory. It's also one of the few crops that can actively occupy a garden row over our cold, cold winter months.

The cloves rehydrate in rainwater before planting

Garlic cloves need a long cold -near freezing- period in order to trigger healthy growth in the spring, and so it's planted late in the fall. The roots quickly take hold after planting, and then wait patiently under the mulch and winter snow until the spring sun begins to warm the soil in April. Strong, frost-resistant leaves quickly emerge and take advantage of the winter moisture still held in the soil, requiring little to no additional watering--it's for this reason that garlic is one of the best suited crops for our dry climate. The young shoots are called green garlic and have a flavor similar to, but stronger than, scallions. However, the over-eager harvester will be disappointed that the clove at the base of the plant will look much like the ones planted before winter. It's not until late-May or June that the clove begins to swell and multiply into the stinky rose we all love.

The cloves are properly spaced before a quick push into the soil

There are two general categories of garlic; hard-neck and soft-neck. The latter being the common California White garlic we see in grocery stores and braided into ristras. In addition to the aesthetics of the beautiful braids, it's primary attribute is it's long storage life. The former, hard-neck garlic, is the true prince of the family. Growing larger cloves and having a wide variety of flavors and heat profiles, varieties like Spanish roja and German white command top prices at farmers markets' and in seed catalogs. Hard-necks also give the timely harvester the gourmand treat of spicy garlic scapes-- the beautiful swan like flower spikes that emerge when the cloves begin to swell. These are cut to encourage large clove growth. Unlike previous years, I procrastinated ordering my garlic, and with Thanksgiving break (and a trip to Pittsburgh) fast approaching, I resorted to only planting soft-necks this year, which I purchased at the La Montanita Co-op-- caution: regular

grocery stores often sell garlic treated with a growth inhibitor. Breaking apart each clump, I planted the large outer cloves and saved the smaller inner cloves for cooking. About 2 pounds of garlic yielded a 100 large cloves and were planted in 40' of row space, 4" apart.

Hope Community Garden

A cold-frame and rainwater tanks awaiting installation

The large tan and green building at the corner north of the Miuramira over-pass is a common sight to most Gallupian's, but few know that within that building, in addition to a professional USDA kitchen, meeting rooms (both available for a modest rental fee), and immaculately clean warehouse, the Community Food Pantry collects and distributes over 3 million pounds of food each year to two of our nation's hungriest counties. It's a fact; Mckinley County ranks as one of the hungriest (food insecurity index) counties in America.  All this on a budget of $300,000-- at a modest $1/pound of distributed food, thats a 10:1 return on contributions. 

Jim Harlin's Community Pantry

Starting next year, the harvest of the Hope Community Garden will be joining the massive poundage of NAPI potatoes (Navajo grown with the water of the San Juan, just south of Farmington), bartered Arizona lettuce and vegetables (traded for potatoes), and Wal-mart surplus that's given away each year. With a $250,000 grant, the Community Pantry is building a vegetable garden, complete with 4, 20'x30' cold-frames for year-round produce, and a large demonstration dry-land field of indigenous corn, beans, and squash. But, as Executive Director Jim Harlin starkly pointed out during the tour, serendipitously arranged by WNMU, while the garden will grow an impressive 14,000 lbs. of food each year, that dramatic number represents only a drop in the bucket of their annual distributions and less than half a semi-truck trailer of food (40,000 lbs); the real unit of food measurement in this hungry county.  Gardening space will be available for rent to the public, and much more could be developed on the 2+ acres of undeveloped land owned by the Community Pantry in the years to come.

Excavations for the retaining wall supporting the above-ground beds and cold frames

Please, support The Community Pantry with your labor and/or checkbook! Also, buy 2 turkeys at T&R Market in Yah-ta-Hey, (my school's business partner!) for $0.49/lb, and donate the second to the food pantry to feed local families this Thanksgiving. Also watch for The Food Network's Dinner Impossible host Nigel filming his show at the Community Pantry's demonstration kitchen during this December's Red Rock Balloon Rally.  

Beef stock

At 6500 feet, 13 1/2 lbs. of pressure = 240+ degrees

With the high-pressure canner I bought this summer and 30 lbs. of beef bones from El Morro Valley Ranch in the freezer, I had to make my own version of all natural organic beef stock this past weekend. I started with a bike ride to the coop for organic celery and carrots. They had both.  The next stop with the BOB trailer was The Water Store for 4 gallons of purified water, and then back home, slowly. 

5 pounds of thawed beef bones

I browned batches of the bones in olive oil, and then, with about 15 lbs of the bones and gravy, I filled the stainless steel brewing kettle with nearly all the water. After bringing it all to rolling boil, I skimmed foam from the top for about 10 minutes.  I simmered the bones alone for about 3 hours before adding a pound each of the celery, carrots, and onions, a handful of bay leaves, whole peppercorns, sea salt. Then everything simmered overnight. In the morning I carefully skimmed and set aside about an inch of fat from the surface of the broth, and used a slotted ladle to remove all the solids. After heating the cans and lids to 180, I filled 6 quarts with the rich smelling broth. Using a fine steel mesh sifter I was able to filter out all of the particles of meat and vegetables, and was left with a uniform dark tan broth. 

Removing the jars after waiting the hour or more it takes the canner to depressurize

The Ball Blue Book calls for 20 minutes at 10 lbs. pressure for stocks (a considerable difference from any meat stew recipe which is processed for 120 minutes or more). In Gallup at 6500', to achieve the safe temperature of 240 inside the jars, I try to keep at 13.5 lbs of pressure. The pressure weight on the Presto canner I bought is set for 15 lbs, so I adjust the big burner on the stove to around med-low to low to keep that pressure, and adjust frequently to keep it above the minimum of 13 lbs. and the over processing (higher temperature) of 14 lbs. and above.