• Take a full head of the freshest and best garlic you can find
• Crush each clove through a garlic press into a jar
• Cover the garlic with local organic honey and put into the fridge.

Whenever you feel your throat starting to tickle, take a spoonful of garlic honey and hold it in your mouth and throat for a minute of so.  It will burn a little and cause you to have nasty garlic breath, but it kills all those throat germs dead.  This remedy is not for the fainthearted – but it works.

Enjoy the joys of garlic!

Roland Evans
Organic Bountea     

• Collect as many bags of leaves as possible and cover all exposed soil with organic matter
• Clear the beds and plant a cover crop of alfalfa and winter rye
• Compost everything you can find and add any old compost to the soil
• Plant flowering bulbs (tulips, daffodils, crocuses, etc.) and garlic in early October

Protected soil will burst with new life in the spring.

 
Bountea Compost Tea:  Build up the soil for fall with Bountea, M3 and Root Web.  Use SuperStart when planting or transplanting seeds.

Hard-neck garlic

Now for the the details.  Garlic come in two basic varieties:
Hard-necks – these are tastier, have a shorter shelf life and have a stiff stem in the middle (see picture) and,
Soft-necks – these are your common store varieties that keep well and are usually milder in taste.  Elephant garlic is not really a garlic but has similar growing preferences.

All garlic likes a fertile, well-drained, richly-composted soil that holds enough moisture during the winter.  Plant in full sun.

Choose varieties that grow well in your area by asking at your local farmers market.  There are numerous wonderful hard-neck varieties that come from all over the world that you can purchase on the web.  I love the German and Russian varieties, some of which have purple skins.  You can try ordinary store-bought garlic but it may not form big heads in your area.

Choose the largest, fattest cloves and plant 2″ deep with the root end down, about 4″ apart.  Protect with a row cover and keep slightly moist but not too wet.  Be ready to mulch well as winter comes.  Apply a good dose of Bountea with Root Web but no M3.

In spring, as the green spikes come up, pull away the mulch and again apply Bountea, but this time with M3.  If you are growing hard-neck varieties, the plant will produce a tall spike called a scape.  Break this off and use for cooking – it has a lovely mild flavor.

Harvest in July when the outer leaves are turning brown.  These outer leaves will form the papery skin protecting the garlic for storage.
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