“Stop and smell the garlic. That’s all you have to do” William Shattner”
Lately, while others have been inside baking Christmas cookies these chilly Oregon Days, I have been outside planting garlic for the next year. Some of my friends know me as the “Garlic Queen,” for having developed an obsession for tasty, huge, and beautiful garlic. It’s become an art form for me. Yes, self-expression in growing garlic!
Being a garlic lover, I became very frustrated with the quality of garlic available in the grocery store. It turns out 
that most of the garlic in the USA comes from China! Surprising since garlic is a fairly easy crop to grow that most of it is imported. Thus some years back I began my education in garlic and garlic cultivation.
Originally from the middle east, 700 species of garlic are now grown around the world.
There are two main types, hardneck & softneck . The hardneck garlic has a hard woody stem and puts out a flowering scape (that is used for also used for culinary purposes). They have fewer cloves than softnecks but are all fairly uniformly large in size. I find they have a longer shelf life than softneck which contradicts other sources. Softneck or “artichoke” style garlic have lots more cloves that get smaller towards the middle. These are the garlics that can be braided. Each variety of garlic all has their unique flavors and storage life.
I grow Susanville (softneck) for their “wow” factor. They often can get quite large and have a pretty purple tinge to them. They make great gifts. For the hardnecks I grow “Musica” for the huge cloves, stronger taste. They also keep a month or so longer.
I have to give credit to the folks who raise Jacob and Churro sheep up the road at Bide A Wee Farm which I affectionately call “Poo Corner.” The composted manure from these furry darlings makes for great garlic as well as anything I grow in the garden. I also invested years ago in decent garlic seed from Hood River Garlic. I save the best heads from the 
years’ crop for the next. The bigger the clove planted equals the biggest bulb for the next year. Also worthwhile was purchasing the book Growing Great Garlic:The Definitive Guide for Organic Gardeners and Small Farmers by Ron Engeland which is the bible of garlic growing.
The cloves are all tucked away now in their winter bed with a generous covering of straw mulch They will appear again come summer with the turn of the shovel as delightful bulbs- Christmas in July!
I was out in the garden today “putting it to bed “ for the winter. It’s good work on a chilly autumn day. I looked up at the sky and the colorful leaves and said to myself “this day deserves a poem- just do it” so I dashed off to the house in search of a notebook and pen. Sometimes you just have to pause, be amazed, and write about it!
When they come, catch them by writing or sketching them in a notebook less they blow away into someone else’s “garden”. Then give them the attention they need to germinate.
It’s tomato time here in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. The only advantage I can see of the hot summers we have been having is that the tomatoes love them. Growing good, delicious, organic tomatoes is an art form and I have gotten good at it- actually a little too good. Frequently I get tomatoes over a pound and they aren’t even the beefsteak variety. But, there are only so many tomatoes the two of us can consume. We have a freezer full now and they are still coming on. Finding the extra homes other than the compost pile has gotten to be too much effort. Next year I will have to go down to three plants. The varieties I grew this year….
The rain
flower.
Planting a garden is an alchemy of human interaction with natural processes.
It seems like just yesterday I was pulling out spent tomato plants & putting the garden tools away for the winter. But here we are again- Spring and my inner gardener is awakened again.