Garlic Barbara Babcock

GARLIC

By Barbara Babcock DBA: Tailgate Garlic, Thoreau, New Mexico

"P “Potter-head” author, JK Rowling, has written: “We do not need magic to change the world, we carry all the power we need inside ourselves already: we have the power to imagine better.” If GARLIC could read, and perhaps it does, this statement might be its personal green mantra.

As a personal garlic convert, I still do believe that garlic, a member of the lily family, contains magic. And according to myth and legend, others have believed the same for thousands of years. Consider the history of thwarting vampires; thieves during the Great Plague, with garlic necklaces escaped death; and hung over the door of newlyweds, forecasted blissful togetherness. Not content to influence mere mortals, planted at the roots of a rosebush, it causes aphid-demise, and mites mysteriously disappear. Six dried garlic bulbs were even found in King Tuts tomb, nothing like having the power to influence the afterlife.

My mother was the first to bring garlic into my life, by telling me that I wouldn’t like it. Her prediction clung to me until I moved out of her house. As I learned to cook for myself, I relied on dried garlic powder, and then moved on to garlic salt. I have no memory of my own first garlic bulb encounter—after all the dry forms certainly saved time and effort. I had yet to learn that taste is as unique as one’s self and I had a lot of exploring to do.

Garlic is a plant that makes the world a more flavorful place. The bulb is rich in minerals, especially sulfur compounds. It also contains potassium, calcium, phosphorus, iron, riboflavin, and vitamin C. It is low in sodium and free of fat. It has been used as currency among the Roman legions and fueled the pyramid builders of ancient

Egypt. And in our modern world, I can add that an average clove (a single section of the bulb) only has two calories.

After putting an edge on the young and foolish stage of my life of planting and growing, I believed that I was ready for garden wisdom. I would make my retirement-fortune tending and selling tomatoes. Little did I know that tomatoes don’t “talk” much, require a lot of work and water, and whisper to the bugs and grubs, whether it kills them or not. I did fondly think of them as similar to humans and their addictions—read alcohol and tobacco.

Luckily my 9 to 5pm day life jobs often had a research component, and I relied on that skill to find out what I wanted to grow, and how to encourage my garden to help me do so.

Garlic is planted in the fall – harvested in spring. For about seven years, I have used Halloween as a plant-by-date. Mail-order, seed garlic arrives at my Bluewater Lake property in bulb shape. Layers of thin paper-like skin are broken apart into the plantable cloves. They air-dry for a day or two on re-cycled cookie sheets, and then are planted in rows, point up and about six inches below ground. Last year, clad in my climate-awareness coat, I selected a plant-by-date two weeks before Halloween; and because of that garlic-green this year is looking much stronger.

When garlic does bloom, so does adversity in the next step of growth choice: to cut that bloom off, to let the plant bulb grown larger, or to leave it in its natural growth pattern. I chose to cut the flower off. The flower and about five inches of stem are then used as salad fixin’s—tasting like garlic chives.

So, by now you can tell I am “hooked” on this plant. I can laugh at the culinary-teasing-garlictitle of the “stinkin rose.” And now when asked if I put garlic in everything I cook, I admit I probably looked dumbfounded, but try not to reply, “Why wouldn’t I?” I still have to try garlic ice-cream— but it is on my list, along with hitting the garlicfestival trail to Gilmore, California, where it is said that the smell travels a mile or so before you get to the town. I imagine that it is like salt air rolling in from the ocean—and since I live within the 7000 feet mountain smell of pine, it is “a good imagining” during this time of restricted travel.

According to the Rugers University professor Joel Flagler, (5/2/20 - https://www.marketwatch. com/story/this-earth-day-especially-rememberplants-are-non-judgmental-what-its-like-to-startgardening-during-a-pandemic-2020-04-22) “There are certain, very stabilizing forces in gardening that can ground us when we are feeling shaky, uncertain, terrified really. It’s these predictable outcomes, predictable rhythms of the garden that are very comforting right now.’ With this small bit of garlic history, I hope you will enjoy my plants and visit at the Farmers’ Market in Gallup this summer. New Mexico Governor Lujan has granted small family farmer’s permission to sell in a limited way this summer. Samples are a thing of the past for this 2020 Market. I will certainly try and help you grow your “verbal palate,” during the wide-open space of the Downtown Walkway. The most treasured complement I have been given in my years of inventing and producing garlic products to enhance your home cooking, has been the person who said, “I don’t have to taste your stuff, I know it is always good.” But then there was the guy who brought his visiting family downtown because he considered, TAILGATE GARLIC a great New Mexico tourist experience … (or is that because, I sell next to Fran, the Hot Chile/Salsa Queen?)

Please come and decide for yourself—we will be outside this summer with masks on (instead of bells on), from the first Saturday after the Fourth of July from 8:30 to 11:30am through early October.