Home Grown Garlic

There’s nothing like home grown garlic. These taste alone will make you swear off the stuff from China you find in the stores.

Home Grown Garlic – Grow It for the Taste!

Garlic found in supermarkets tastes bland. It’s grown in China unless marked otherwise. Think of how far it travels. Of course, it loses flavor!

My Own Home Grown Garlic Adventures

So do you remember my posts about growing garlic? My friend Patty gave me lovely cloves, and I planted them in the fall of 2009, harvesting huge gorgeous garlic bulbs in June.  I finally cooked with them this week.

Stored Well

They stored really well in my makeshift basement cold cellar.  It looks as if my drying technique worked well, which is good news.  I pressed a clove to add it to a pot of tomato sauce I had bubbling on the stove.  The first thing I noticed was that the home grown garlic was just filled with juice – so juicy that it was dripping into the pot, filling the air with the pungent aroma of garlic. When I press store bought cloves, I never get juice – never!

Strong Flavor

Next, the flavor. It was subtle yet pungent, and just different from store bought garlic.  It’s hard to explain, but it had multiple layers of flavor instead of just a bite of garlic.

And lastly…odor.  Let’s be honest. We’ve all dealt with garlic breath!  The interesting thing about the home grown organic garlic was that it did not produce garlic breath.  At least not that I noticed, although given that we all ate the sauce, who knows? Perhaps we all stunk and nobody cared!

Garlic is a winner in my book. I did not plant any this year because of the abundance from the first year, but I will definitely grow it again.