Growing Garlic in Alaska

Last year during the spring planting season my mom called me from Snowfire Gardens and let me know that she had got a batch of garlic set that should have been sent to us in the fall and she didn't have time to deal with it so she asked if I wanted to try a spring planting of Garlic.  Of course I said YES!  Garlic on our end of the world is supposed to be planted in the fall, left through the winter and then harvested the next fall.

I put it in one of my raised beds and set them in just like onions.  They looked just like garlic that you get at the store just a little bit more tan in color.

I had some great scapes come off of the garlic, and it seemed to be growing well.  This was my first time planting garlic at all here at Wicked Raven Farm so it was a bit of a guessing game especially since we plated it at the wrong time of the year.

Harvest time came and I began pulling the garlic as I needed it at first, but once it started getting colder and rainy I was worried about it rotting in the ground, as I had some onions that did from the wet and then hot and wet and hot that we had last fall.

Here is the garlic in the harvest trug - isn't it beautiful?  This variety is called "Purple Glazer" from Filaree Farms.

  

This particular clove grew oddly into a three pronged bulb.  Most of the cloves just formed into lovely round balls of delicious garlic and did not separate into cloves like they should.  I am sure it was the growing time that we used - I planted fall garlic this season to be harvested next fall and Im sure they will form to cloves like we are used to.  Ill keep you posted on the progress.

Here are a couple of the garlic cloves on the cutting board ready for use.  This garlic is really delicious, cloved or not.  It has a smooth nutty flavor even when raw, and when it is cooking it is like having an Italian Chef in your kitchen.  The aroma is divine and the flavor even better!

Here is a group of garlic that I braided for drying and it is hanging on the wall in the stairwell to the garage,  It is long lasting (as a matter of fact I just this month used the last clove).

A few things I noted when I was harvesting the garlic;  the deeper planted cloves had stronger scapes and had started to clove up.  The shallow plants were weak and the scapes often rotted off before harvest, the clove itself was fine if you could find it but the scape was gone.  The garlic likes a fairly rich soil mix it seems and not too wet but not drought either.  It likes a good moisture balance for the best plants.

As I said earlier, I planted fall garlic this year and to winter it over I used compost mulch with leaf mulch on top of the planting bed (raised bed about 4x6') with blue board styrofoam on top of that, and then holding all of that down is some 4x4" post material so the wind cant blow it off.  If all goes well I will have garlic coming up around the blue board in the spring.  

We did get about 3 feet of snow this past week so that will help keep the garlic well insulated and alive,  Im just hoping the little mice that are around don't like garlic!  Above you can see on the brown shed where I cleaned off part of the snow - it is still snowing in this picture and it got dark before I could get the rest of the shed and all of the green house cleaned off.

Stay tuned for more on growing garlic in Alaska - Ill have a report in the fall again!

I hope you are having fun getting you seed dreams in order and getting rested for spring when we will be so busy getting green!

*****UPDATE****

SO .... HEre are the shots of the garlic bin with the covering on it.  Below is the leaf mulch in about 6" layer and then (no photo) I laid blue board insulation down on top of that and then put the boards on top.

  

I agonized through the whole goofy winter and finally when the freezing nights were passed I took all of the stuff off - fully expecting to see happy little garlic shoots coming up all over the place!  No such luck!  Not one shoot.  So I watered well and waited about another week to see what happened and.... nothing!  Dang it!  I dug around in the bin a bit to see if I could find any of the garlic that I had planted and I found exactly two of the bulbs - they appeared to have frozen solid!  One thing I did notice is that the bulbs had no root growth - we had planted this garlic in the late fall and it appears that it did not have time to set any roots at all before the freeze.  SO I did the only reasonable thing and I replanted garlic in the spring!

My plan is to leave some of it over the winter and see how it does when it has had some root growth.  The rest we will just eat because home grown garlic is delish!

Happy Finally Summer!!!

A New Year - A New Sourdough Start - A Gift from the Past

About a month ago my boss - Beth Buchanan brought me a great treat - she brought a few of us at work these special treats and it is with great delight that I am using it today to make breakfast for  the gang of boys who are here for the holiday break to help us get through!  And they want to fish too!

The special treat is sourdough starter!  Not just any sourdough starter - this starter was given to her Husbands mother in 1969 by the Commanding Officer's wife on the base that they lived on.  The starter came to her in 1964 - a wonderful gift from the past.  Prior to 1964 we dont know where it came from.  Pretty amazing!

With Sourdough you have to plan ahead as you have to start the starter project the night before (or very early in the morning - which doesnt really work for me - Im a night before girl).  

The recipe card with the story on the back is so cool - it has the recipe for 11 pancakes all the way to 120 or  some such number!  Its even laminated which is a bonus round for me - Im a bit of a messy bessy in the kitchen at times!  Luckily Im good at cleaning up too!

Here is the night before starter - I opted for the  batch that makes 22 pancakes since the fishermen are big eaters! Growing boys you know!  The batch starts with 1 C Milk, 1 C flour and 2 Tbsp Starter from the little jar.  Mix it up in your bowl and cover it lightly - leave it overnight to work its magic!

Here is the story card (the back of the recipe card) and the little jar of starter.

Above are all the ingredients that you need for a great batch of pancakes!  Before you start adding more ingredients though take out of your bowl the amount of starter that you used and replace it in your jar to keep feeding the starter and maintain your batch.  This is an extremely important step - otherwise you wont have enough starter.

I think you can read the recipes on the card - Ill include the one I made below.

After yoou remove your starter and replace it in the little jar add 1 Tbsp of butter (I melted mine) 1 egg, 3/4 tsp soda, 1/2 tsp salt and 1/2 Tbsp sugar.  Mix well and fry up on your hot griddle - I put a little bacon grease on mine - butter works well too. 

Here is the great story of this batch of starter - The story reads "My mom Gloria received her first jar of this sourdough starter in 1969 in Altus, Ok from the wife of my fathers squadron Commander in the USAF who had gotten hers from a friend in 1964; beyond that I do not know the history.  While I was growing up my mom Gloria Buchanan tried to make sourdough pancakes 3 times a week for years until all us kids left home.  Once my parents moved to Galena, Ak. my dad made pancakes every Saturday for me and family in creating what is known as "Sourdough Saturday".

Here is a batch of cakes on the griddle.  I have a cast iron flat griddle - we call it the "flat iron" and it is what I use mostly to cook bacon, pancakes, and grilled cheese - it has lots of uses though.  I used a 1/4 C measuring cup to ladle the cakes on to the iron - I had three boys to feed so 3 at a time worked well for me that day.  Once you have them on the hot griddle watch for the air bubbles to form.  Once most of them have popped it is time to turn the cake! Then just watch for the edges to start to turn golden on the bottom and they are done!

And here is the finished product!  You can make smaller "dollar" pancakes or bigger if you want!  Enjoy!  I hope you have someone who can share a batch of starter with you and I hope it has as great and special a story as this batch, this gift from the past has!