GardenFork – Eclectic DIY

Tag: garlic video

Foraging For Wild Garlic : GF Video

Foraging for edible plants in the spring includes looking for edible wild greens like wild garlic, also called spring garlic. This edible wild food is one of the first plants to start growing after the long winter, and is ready for your dinner plate. Wild Garlic looks like a young scallion plant or chives, and is edible. The taste has a slight garlic aroma, but its definitely in the onion taste family. You can find this edible plant growing in lawns and forest edges. Many consider it a weed, however we think it a great addition to salads or meals.

Be Safe In Your Foraging!

Double check with a good plant identification book! At the end of the post are some books we suggest. Always be sure with your plant identification before adding this to your soup.

According to Wikipedia, when cattle eat wild garlic, it can give a garlic-like taste to the milk and beef, interesting. It is native to Europe and considered an invasive here in North America.

I see this edible plant growing in yards a lot. I’m sure the homeowners don’t realize they have food growing in their yard! To harvest the wild garlic, its best to use one of those 3 pronged garden fork hand tools. You have to dig down a bit to get out the bulbs, or you can snip off the green stems and they will grow back. As the plant matures, unfortunately the stems get woody and aren’t good eating. If you pull this plant out of a park or someone’s yard, make sure it hasn’t been sprayed with an herbicide. Not a good thing to be eating that stuff.

Let us know what you know about this plant or any questions below:

June 7, 2013
How To Grow Garlic, It’s Not Rocket Science – GF Video
Watch our video on how to grow garlic, then go out and plant your garlic! There are a few keys things that we go over below.

Wondering how to grow garlic?

Its not rocket science, as even Eric can grow garlic. Its is easy to do, garlic does not have many diseases or pests, and its pretty low maintenance. Our how to plant garlic video steps you through the process.

Couple of key things to keep in mind:
- For most northern climates, you plant garlic in the fall
- Order seed garlic as early as you can, most garlic growers sell out.
- I don’t mulch my garlic bed, you can if you want.
- The garlic may start to grow in the fall, that’s ok.
- And learn how to harvest and how to cook garlic scapes in this video here.
You can buy seed garlic, which is basically the largest bulbs of a particular strain of garlic from Filaree Farm, you can also find them at your local farmers market. Buy the largest, healthiest bulbs the farmer has.

Garlic is broken down into a few varieties, Rocambole, Purple Strip, Porcelain, Artichoke, Silverskin, and a bunch more. We plant hardneck garlic here in New England, softneck Italian style garlic does not do well here.

Maybe one of your neighbors already grows garlic and you can get a few heads of garlic from them to plant. I’ve heard stories of families who have brought garlic over from Russia or Poland, and keep the variety going in the backyard. Getting garlic from the local farmers market means those particular bulbs will grow well in your area, maybe ask the farmer, I’m willing to bet they’ll talk all you want about growing garlic.

How To Grow Garlic, Start With Soil Prep:

First of all, you can grow garlic in regular garden soil, nothing special needs to be done. Plant in the fall, before frost, when the leaves are starting to drop off the trees, rather than the spring. Break apart the cloves a day early, if possible, and let them dry a bit. The flat end of the clove goes into the bottom of the hole. Space the garlic about 6″ apart in rows 12″ apart.

It is possible to plant garlic in the spring, but the yield will be much lower. I have never done it.

Mulching your garlic is a personal think. I don’t think its necessary, and i’m all about simple.

The garlic may sprout before winter, this is OK. Just leave it alone. The grow tip will wilt in the snow, and then the plant will start to grow again in the spring.

In late winter, this same growth and wilting from cold weather may happen again, its OK. The weather will warm and the garlic will kick in soon enough. Let the plants grow, however harvest the scapes in early summer, and then harvest the garlic plants when the stalks start to go brown at the base.

What have been your experiences with growing and cooking with garlic? Let us know below, be great to hear from people!
October 25, 2011
40 Garlic Chicken Recipe, the Eric version

There are a ton of 40 Garlic Chicken recipes, and of course we had to do one ourselves here. What is your recipe? how about sharing it in the comments here?

September 29, 2009
Garlic Scape Pesto

Garlic Scape Pesto is quite a recipe. Watch how eric makes it in this video:

September 27, 2009
How to make Basil Pesto & Eric’s Pesto Recipe

My way of making pesto is by taste. I’ll give you the general outlines here, and you should experiment.

approx 2 cups of basil leaves, stems removed, washed and dried

approx 1/2 cup – 1 cup virgin olive oil

1/2 cup pine nuts or walnuts

1 cup + coarsely grated Parmesan or Roman cheese, the higher the quality, the better.

1-3 cloves of garlic

In a food processor, pour in enough oil to coat the bottom to 1/4 inch deep.

Add in some of the basil leaves and process until roughly chopped

add more leaves, and drizzle some oil on top, process.

repeat until all the leaves are chopped.

toast nuts on the stovetop until fragrant, not burnt

add nuts, cheese, and 1 garlic clove, ( minced or crushed ) and process to desired consistency. You may have to add more olive oil.

Taste and adjust. You may want to add salt.

Pesto will keep a few days in the fridge, its best if the top has a covering of olive oil to keep it fresh. It tastes great on bread, even on corn.

©2007 all rights reserved

July 30, 2007
How To Cook Garlic Scapes – GF Video

You can cook garlic scapes, who knew? Here is a video I made about how to. Scapes taste great, and are easy to cook.

Why Cook Garlic Scapes?

To me, garlic scapes are free food. You are growing the plant for the bulb, but up come these curled stems with immature flowers on them. You can cook garlic scapes as you would scallions, but they also make a great pesto. Be aware, its a powerful pesto, maybe you want to add in some parsley too.

When growing garlic, you want all the energy the plant creates to go in to growing the bulb, so the scape is something farmers want to get rid of. Thankfully, scapes taste great. If you are harvesting scapes in your own garden, keep a few on the plant, they serve as a sign that the plant is ready for harvest. Scapes uncurl and point up when its time to harvest the garlic bulb. (Bet you didn’t know that)

If you want to order seed garlic to plant this fall, I suggest Filaree Farm. I’ve listed a few suggested garlic growing books below as well. Watch our garlic growing videos here.

Scapes are like most alliums, they will keep for a while in the fridge, but they get kinda soft. The flip side of that is when you snap off the scape, you don’t want to cut it off to far down the stem, or it is too stiff. Kinda like asparagus that way. The most common way of cooking scapes is a simple saute, but the get along well with other foods.

Like we show in the video, I think grilling the scapes is the way to go. Especially if you want to show off the neat taste scapes have by themselves. Salt them after cooking, it works nicely.

June 29, 2006