GARLIC!!!!!!

I have been waiting all year for this.  This past Saturday was our garlic harvest and they're beautiful.  We have had a very wet June and as of yesterday we had over 8 inches of rain.  It was just too much and I decided pull them before they started to deteriorate.  And after seeing them, they were ready.

There is something about seeing all this garlic hanging on our porch drying down for winter storage.  We grew a variety called Siberian.  It is a hardneck garlic and this variety is adapted to the Northern climates and can handle 6 inches of solid frozen ground.  The Siberian garlic is intense and spicy; it also forms 6-8 very large, easy to peel cloves because I hate peeling tiny cloves.   We had over 30 pounds and 120 heads.  The goal was to harvest about 120-130 heads and we would save the largest heads (about 1/5th of the harvest) and replant in late October.

You wonder whether we'll eat all this garlic...probably not (at least not this year).  There will probably be excess.  But that is OK because it was a fun to grow.  But just to let you know, we actually do eat a lot of garlic; almost 2 heads a week.  Basically any recipe that calls for garlic, I triple it.  Our basic marinara has 4-6 cloves and I routinely add half a head of garlic to our roasted chicken.  And I have been known to substitute garlic ounce for ounce for recipes calling for onion because I like the extra punch.  It's addictive.  and I believe you can never eat too much garlic.