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Transcript: Welcome to our kitchen in the winter! We have lots of garlic, and I’m excited to share with you what I’m looking for, how I’m deciding which garlic to eat, which to not, and how you can increase your storage life even in the middle of the winter.
So here we are, and from right out of the gate, know that there are some things that you do have control over. And a lot of things you don’t have control over that are affecting your garlic storage life. And some of the things that you don’t have control over: the DNA type. Like if you have Music Garlic, for example, a porcelain type, it’s just inherently going to last less long than something like a purple stripe garlic, as far as like the DNA types of garlic. So right now we’re really focusing here is our Italy Hill porcelain. And even though it has nice strong wrappers, and it has the perfect amount of neck still on it, it has a few more roots than we usually like to have, but not many, that’s not going to be affecting the storage life. But we are actively trying to eat all of our Italy Hill as relatively quickly as possible, because it’s just not going to last that much longer. And where we have lots of other varieties that are going to last for months.
So I’m also taking a look at those varieties that are going to last for months. For example, Chesnok Red, which this is an amazing bulb — most of what we’re eating are these small bulbs. This we could have planted for seed and, and we just didn’t. But I highly recommend eating the small ones, of course, and so now you know how big our garlic is that we plant, if we didn’t plant this for seed, friends. So that’s an aside. But these are rock solid.
When I touch these Italy Hill cloves, I feel this slight softness in the cloves. And I also feel this looseness in the bulb itself, where when I am feeling this Chesnok Red, oh man, every single one of those cloves are rock solid. And, the clove arrangement. They’re just tightly packed on that bulb still. So I’m psyched that this garlic is going to last us for months to come.
But take a look at some of these in between. So here is another artichoke types, the softnecks are really long storing especially the silver skin softnecks, but sometimes they’re not. And that can be not necessarily your fault, but the way that it grew can greatly impact that. So take a look at this. This is our Regatusso, a softneck. And you can see how this wasn’t anything we could have done differently. It just decided to grow. And maybe we could have harvested a few days a week earlier. But the clove the wrappers split there. And so more oxygen is getting in the clove tightness, the arrangement on the bulb just isn’t as compact. So even though it’s a softneck, it has great storage. Here we are, it’s almost February and it’s still rock solid. I’m nonetheless putting this into kind of our bowl of garlic to eat quickly. Just because I don’t want to hedge my bets. I know that things can happen, sometimes garlic can sprout.
So here are two examples of sprouting garlic. This is a hardneck, you can see that hardneck stem right there, and with hardnecks generally, when they sprout, they sprout right there at the top. There’s actually a second one coming right there. And here’s a softneck, Regatusso once more, you can see its little sprout coming up from one of its outer cloves. So this guy like absolutely, we’re gonna eat this tonight. And not all of the cloves are actually bolting in here and starting to sprout, but I’m not taking my chances. I just want to eat it and I know that once one begins, they’re all starting to think about it.
So another one that I found that I’m excited to eat very quickly is this one. And, I’m amazed — this is always going to happen there as you’re going through your selections of your garlic and in the late summer when you harvest and cure it and then as you’re going into the fall and as you’re looking at it and evaluating it throughout the winter you’ll find ones that you missed. Like take a look at this one. It looks like a lovely head of Ragatusso, a softneck, and then on this side whoa! This as it was harvested, got punctured by the harvesting fork and cured and remarkably the rest of the cloves are totally solid and are great. But these two, those two clips are clearly not great. Because garlic is so crazy antifungal and antibacterial, it’s warding off infection for the rest of the bulb from those gaping wounds, but it will. I don’t know how long it could last– it could last another six months, it could last another six days. And so we’re putting it into that container that says, Yes, eat this garlic now.
So yeah, with this bowl of garlic that I just love, but I love bowls. And I love big bowls full of produce. And I love big bowls full of our garlic. So I just think it’s beautiful. I love to have them in our lives, in our kitchen. So this is actually great storage for them. It’s not the best long term, long term, I’d love it to be a little cooler. Check out our storage videos for all of those stats, the temperatures and humidity. But know that honestly, your kitchen counter is really pretty great for storing garlic, especially if it can breathe. Yes, the garlic at the bottom of this bowl is breathing much less well than the garlic at the top. If you have a nice mesh basket that’s perfect. But you’ve got lots of options and know that this is what I do. And if I do it, you can do it too. I hope that you’re enjoying your garlic this winter friends and I hope that you enjoy garlic even more for many years to come as a result of knowing my little tips and my little tricks and I’m constantly learning more and I’m always excited to share them.
