SPRING WEEK 5

BOUQUET INGREDIENTS

sunflowers, snapdragons, statice, feverfew

If you'll oblige me, I'd like to take a small detour from flowers this week:

When Spencer and I made the decision to stop growing vegetables commercially at the end of our 2024 season, we decided (at my insistence) to retain garlic in our production plan. If you're not familiar, garlic is planted in the fall for an early summer harvest. Individual cloves are planted in early November, and the cold period over winter causes these cloves to divide and form a new bulb! Once garlic is pulled from the ground, it must be left out to cure in a shady, well-ventilated area for 3 weeks or so. This is when the garlic dries down, it's succulent green leaves becoming papery wrapping that allow it to store for months. (We also prefer to strip off the outer, mud-covered layer before curing, though many growers clean off this dirty layer after curing.) We grow a softneck heirloom variety called Inchelium Red that keeps for up to twelve months, and we spent most of our week last week harvesting and processing our 2026 garlic crop.

We harvested around 1200 bulbs, most of which will be braided into decorative garlic braids. The largest bulbs will be saved for replanting this fall, and any too-small or damaged ones will be sorted out (for use in my kitchen, of course). I find the braided garlic stunning on its own but I also love weaving in dried flowers, and this year we planted some woody herbs like sage, thyme, and rosemary to experiment with weaving into the braids as well.

I feel the beauty of the braids complements our cut flower production, but this is culinary garlic and I encourage everyone who purchases a braid not to be afraid to snip the bulbs off for use in your kitchen. In my family growing up we really only used garlic powder and "jarlic" -- minced garlic you can find in a jar at the grocery store -- so I didn't learn how to use fresh garlic until I started working on a vegetable farm in 2020. I was blown away by the flavor and the aroma and now we use fresh garlic in our home as much as possible, often going through several bulbs in one week for our family of two.

So, while I was quite impatient at our lack of flowers last week, the time did allow me to get our garlic harvested, cleaned, and laid out to cure without the usual added stress that we've learned to expect with garlic harvest time. The garden is always bestowing unexpected gifts like this and I learn to live a little better each time.

Enjoy the blooms and the rest of your week!