mmm. garlic, among other things.

tonight we harvested and hung to dry 21 heads of garlic. three different varieties, with plenty of heads yet to pull from the garlic bed. exciting. and now the shed smells spicy (in a good way).

to the die hard fans of this blog, you may recall last summer when we purchased much of this garlic on lopez island. we also "borrowed" some from the leavens' family homestead in darby, montana. planted last fall, most of it has matured beautifully.


it took nearly nine months. quite the gestation period, but well worth the wait for each clove to develop into a full head that we'll now dry, store, and be able to use for the next several months.

in addition to the bounty of garlic, we've also been harvesting a good amount of baby zucchinis, squash blossoms, peas, shallots, and onions. by the by, onions, shallots, and garlic are all considered alliums (the onion genus). wikipedia tells me that with about 1250 species, allium is one of the largest plant genera on the planet. also, did you know that china is the world's largest producer of garlic at 23 billion pounds/year (or 77% of the world's output). india, south korea, russia, and the u.s. (1.4%) follow...leaving the schwartzes in a very distant 7th place. i suppose we'll take it.