As we are entering the last four weeks of the summer share, we are hoping to have definite information on the Autumn share available within the coming week or two. The Autumn CSA, which will be 3 sets of biweekly pick ups, on Tuesdays and Saturdays starting in early November and finishing in early December. We will send an email when sign up is available and we hope you will join us to fill your tables and pantries with local Organic sweet potatoes, some winter squash, potatoes, and green, and more for the upcoming holiday seasons.
We hope you have been enjoying our garlic this year. After being pulled from the ground in July before the deluge of rain, it was dried in the barn before we trimmed it, and sorted out the "food-grade" cloves from the seed cloves. In order to produce the harvest for next year, we must save the biggest heads to be used as next years’ seed stock. Our garlic this year has been the hard-necked kind which is prized for its intense flavor and production of the scapes which you received earlier this season.
The hard-necked seed-quality heads, which sell for up to $20/lb, need to be split into individual cloves and then planted, root-side down into well-fertilized soil before the end of October. They will then be covered by straw to retain their moisture and keep them from freezing and thawing too often or too soon during the dark season.
After the winter, another layer of straw will be applied to protect the tender green shoots which come up in early spring, while also suppressing competitive weeds. The reason you shouldn’t store garlic in your refrigerator is that when it comes out of that cold environment, the clove thinks it’s time to put up a green shoot, as spring has arrived. Since you want to avoid your plump clove turning into a green shoot, store your garlic in a dry dark place, at room temperature. Despite its production being very labor intensive, we think the end result is much more flavorful than what you usually find in the grocery store, the garlic heads which have most likely been grown in and shipped from afar overseas.
