So much garlic!
Back in the fall of 2022, we planted a good-sized bed of both hardneck and softneck garlic and they both did well; the softneck was huge! It takes around nine months to grow so we dug them up sometime around July 2023. Softneck garlic is so tightly wrapped in its bulb that it tends to store longer in the pantry. Knowing that, we used up the hardneck first as it doesn’t last as long.
The difference between hardneck and softneck garlic.
The hardneck garlic tends to be cold tolerant, growing in zones 2 through 6. They need a cold snap of around 10 weeks for vernalization.
The softneck tends to be more heat tolerant. In case you are wondering, you buy the softneck at the grocery store, in my area anyway. They usually grow best in zones 5-7 with some varieties growing in our zone of 8-9. We used the later varieties in our garden but for some weird reason, they both did well.
Why?
We’d planted more of the heat-tolerant garlic of course and we had a lot of extra. I wanted to store some of it for easier use and I’d heard that I could chop them up and store them in the fridge in a little olive oil, so I am giving that a try. I chopped up around 4 bulbs and this filled a pint up. By the way…garlic can sting your fingers if you have a hangnail!
How?
I busted and pulled the bulbs apart and then snipped off the ends of each clove, this took a while. I put them in a big tumbler with a lid, and shook them to loosen the peeling…you have to shake it pretty hard for it to work. I peeled them and added them to the little chopper in batches and quickly filled up a pint-sized jar. I added a little olive oil, not to drown them but, to keep it sort of wet…I was surprised at how dry the garlic was after chopping it up.
I will keep you posted on any storage changes, I hope we can use it all up before it turns bad. So far I have used it in my Chicken Bryan recipe and some fresh stir-fried green beans. It was very aromatic and we enjoyed it very much.
♥ Thanks for visiting ♥
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