Okay, you can look at these gorgeous Hot Peppers until I get some more pictures up.
and in the meantime, read Aurels story about serpent Garlic
I watched Lumpy strut across the weld shop floor with a brown paper bag in his hand, and I knew by his stride that he was proud about something. He stood only five foot three and his eyes smiled before his gravely voice betrayed a teasing sense of humor.
“Dis stuff is why my wife stay wit me still hafter all dees years.” Lumpy whispered with a twinkle in his eye. “Well, I’m tell you, sometam two tree tams a night.”
Lumpy had immigrated to Canada from Belgium in the early seventies, but still hadn’t lost his heavy accent when I met him in a weld shop in 1987. He brought many talents with him from the old world, including a great sense of humor and an understanding of how to grow serpent garlic. Much of what I know about this plant was gleaned from Lumpy’s experiences.
The scent that emanated from the bag was ambrosia to my nose and I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply. Inside were five huge purple and white garlic bulbs, each with six or seven perfectly shaped cloves, evenly spaced around a rock hard central stock. Long white roots dangled from the bottom of every bulb. This was the seed stock that would grow to nourish my body and soul in what can only be described as a love affair with flavor.
“I grow dis garlic in ma garden now for tirteen year.” explained Lumpy, “an before dat, ma family grow it in Belgium since before I was a boy.” Lumpy went on to describe the history of the seed stock that he so kindly passed into my hands. His mother had sent him five cloves of this very same garlic from Belgium in the fall of 1974.
Lumpy ate two cloves from his mother’s gift and he planted the rest in a compost rich garden soil, just as he had seen his mother do when he was a boy. “Plant dees dis fall bout tree hinches deep in groun with plenty old sheet.” said Lumpy. “ Chicken, rabbit, pig don matter but mus be old. Not fresh. You unerstand? Too fresh will kill the seed. You unerstand?” Lumpy’s colorful description is the key to growing great serpent garlic. Garlic is planted in the fall in good garden soil with plenty of composted manure. Not fresh, you understand!
“ Dees maybe grow leedle bit dis fall, stick up couple hinches, don’t matter. Cold don’t keel em. Grow good root.” said Lumpy, pointing to the root ball under one of the garlic bulbs. Lumpy’s callused hands separated the bulb into seven perfect paper covered cloves that looked very much like supermarket garlic, except that they were all the same large size and the paper cover was much more easily removed.
Lumpy handed the cloves to me and threw away the central stock with the old roots still attached. “ Plant em point up root down, jus lak day come off the bulb.”
Plant the cloves about three or four inches deep, in rows, about two inches wider than your hoe with the same distance between each plant. This block planting is very easy to weed with a sharp light hoe, and the roots will have just enough room to spread out without competition from each other over the winter.
“ Spreeng tam come, dees leetle guys grow lac weed.” said Lumpy. “ When curly Q come in summer tam, you break em all off. You unerstand? Curly Q is lac flower. If you don’t break, garlic no good. You unerstand?”
Plants, and all other life forms for that matter, do everything they do for one single minded purpose. That purpose is to reproduce. Proliferation of the species is the strongest motivation in the plant or animal kingdom. The garlic plant tries to reproduce in two ways. Left to it’s own devices, rocambole or serpent garlic will grow and flower every year. The flower will be pollinated by insects and the plant will set seed. The seed will be dispersed by wind or water or animals to new and more fertile ground, away from the parent plant. And so the cycle goes on and on.
Fortunately for us, garlic has a most wonderful back up system, that we have learned to use to our advantage. When the flower and seed dispensing system is destroyed, the garlic plant will reproduce by bulb division.
Lumpy’s strategy is simple and effective. Your young plants will grow rapidly in the warm spring and summer months. At some point a central flower spike will emerge from each and every one of your plants. It will have a pointed tip and curve into a distinctive curly Q, just like Lumpy said it would. This strange serpent like flower stalk is where the name comes from. As soon as you see flower spikes emerge, you can break them off. Once the flowers are destroyed, the plants will put all their energy into the reproduction of the bulb.
“ Now, stan back and watch em grow. Give stink water, pull weeds and wait. Plants don’t look good is O.K.” said Lumpy, with a wink and a wizened smile. “ Plants look worse is O.K. Is good. Don’t worry.”
Your plants will soon begin to loose the vibrancy that they had before the flower spikes were destroyed. This is as it should be. The above ground part of the plant has lost it’s reason for being, but the sun’s energy is still being collected and stored in the wonderful aromatic bulb, just below the soil’s surface.
What Lumpy delicately calls stink water is really only manure tea. Think of it as aroma therapy for the garden. Twenty pounds of manure tied in a feed bag and floated in a 45 gallon drum full of water will supply a good sized garden for a month or more. As the tea is used up, keep adding water and stirring regularly. Water your plants even though they look kind of depressed. The real action is still happening underground, out of site but not out of mind.
“ When day look dry up an finish in August, you pull em up an hang em in the shed till day cure.” advised Lumpy. “ Den at end of September, you split em up an start all over for nex year. Always plant the beegist wan an eat the leedle wan.” The wisdom of the ages in broken English. If you follow Lumpy’s advice, you will improve your harvest in future years by culling and eating the smaller bulbs, while replanting only the biggest and the best.
When the garlic tops begin to dry up and turn brown in August, you can begin to dig the bulbs up for use in the kitchen. There is no big rush to harvest all the bulbs at once, but as you pull the brownest of the plants, watch for deterioration of the white membrane that covers the bulb. When this happens, the crop will have reached it’s prime and should be harvested and hung to cure.
Dig your plants up with a shovel and rinse them in a pail of water until they are creamy white and free of soil . Don’t remove the roots or stocks or they will not keep well. ( This is why serpent garlic is hardly ever sold in supermarkets. ) Tie the whole plants together in bundles of eight or nine and hang them in a cool dry place. They will keep this way until the following spring or early summer, when the quality will deteriorate because the cloves will try to grow.
After the garlic is harvested, I always plant the bed with a mixture of salad greens. Lettuce, radish and spinach still have plenty of time to mature in the warm autumn weather, and if an early frost does come, the planting will have served as a cover crop. Next summer, I’ll plant this bed with tomatoes. It’s a good idea to rotate the garlic bed from place to place in the garden because many insect pests will abandon areas where garlic has grown. The next crop in the rotation will reap the benefits. Peas or beans should never follow garlic in the crop rotation. I’ve learned that all legumes hate garlic.
The harvest ratio for rocambole garlic is usually six or seven cloves per bulb, and it always has at least a 90% germination rate in my garden. If you really love garlic, you should make sure to plant plenty extra for friends and family. Try some amongst the roses, or anywhere you have trouble with aphids. Groups of garlic plants make an interesting and unusual display with their unique flowering habits and strong strapping leaves. Always remember to keep them away from Lupines, sweet peas or any other pod forming plant.
If Lumpy and I had our way, everyone would be garlic eaters. We would all have breath that could strip the paint off the outhouse door, no virus or bacteria would dare to come near us and none of our wives would leave us after all these years.
