The final count is in. I have planted, tended, and harvested 89 bulbs of garlic this year! Enough for almost two bulbs a week for the next year. Oh my goodness, that’s a total win in my book [insert little happy dance here].

However, if you are imagining that I have 89 gloriously plump and perfect bulbs…you’d be wrong. Some did really well and some gave pretty pitiful little bulbs. But, variety is the spice of life, as they say.

I bought a garlic lovers collection of 4 different types of garlic in the back end of 2022. Maybe it was from Dobbies? I can’t be sure, but it set me back about £20 (so it worked out about 22p for each bulb I have harvested – not bad at all). I planted two hardneck and two softneck varieties:

• Edenrose (hardneck)
• Germidour (softneck)
• Messidrome (softneck)
• Kingsland (hardneck)

Of the four different types, two performed pretty abysmally. These were the Messidrome and Kingsland varieties. They produced really rather small bulbs. They do taste incredible but for the amount of garden space they occupied for such a long time, I really don’t think they were worth it to be honest. I wont be saving any of the bulbs to plant again next year.

However, the Edenrose and Germidour did alright! I got some good sized bulbs from them. They were also the prettiest bulbs too. Edenrose has a pink tinge to the bulb and Germidour is a pretty purple colour. That’s one thing I am beginning to really appreciate about growing food for myself – there are so many prettier vegetables to grow than you find in the shops whether it is purple peas or pretty garlic bulbs. It makes me feel good looking, and eating, things that are a bit ‘different’. I have saved the biggest and plumpest bulbs of these two varieties to plant again in the autumn. Free seed – woohoo!!

Softneck garlic is supposed to store much better than hardneck varieties so I will be using that up first and storing the softneck one as fresh to use over the coming year in small hessian sacks in my teeny tiny utility room (its more like a cupboard with my washing machine in but utility room sounds much more ‘grand’! The hardneck varieties also pushed out these weird smaller cloves bout an inch or two above the ground. I think they are super cute!

I have hung the garlic for several weeks in the shed over at the veggie patch to cure. The leaves all turned brittle so I popped it in a box and brought it home for sorting. I checked each bulb, chose the beauties I was going to save for planting, pulled out all the damaged bulbs or ones that had split to use up first and only kept nice ones for longer term storage. I’ve decided to preserve a lot of the harvest in 3 different ways, mainly because this is how I buy garlic and am used to using it. I have made:

• garlic scape pesto
• Frozen minced garlic
• garlic powder

NOTE: I am part of several facebook groups for people who are growing their own and I have seen some pretty dodgy advice about how to preserve your garlic harvest. Garlic is a low acid food which limits how it can be safely preserved. Waterbath canning is NOT and option – hello botulism. Pressure canning apparently makes it lose the flavour. Putting it in oil and storing at room temperature is another recipe for botulism to potentially grow. The only safe ways I have seen to preserve it are either by dehydrating or freezing. Some people reading this may have other opinions, but you do you and I’ll do what I feel is safe, tested, and evidence based.

Garlic scape pesto

Hardneck varieties of garlic produce garlic scapes – these are long flower stems that are edible and delicious. The scape is pushed from the top of the plant and has a small flower bud on the end. Once the scape has grown into a full loop you can cut it off and eat it. Removing the stem also forces the plant to divert all its energy into creating the garlic bulb below the soil. I like to think of the scapes as a free extra crop. I have read other people’s posts about garlic scapes and how you can buy them, in season, from farmers markets but I have never seen this in my area of the UK? So for me this is a delicacy I can only sample from growing my own.

I made a simple pesto with the trimmed and washed garlic scapes, a small handful of pine nuts, a glug of oil, and the juice of half a small lemon. I whizzed it all together in my mini chopper. I gave it a little taste and oh my goodness this is pretty potent stuff. It has a lovely, almost spicy garlic, hum to it. It is absolutely delicious stirred into pasta and topped with a sprinkle of parmesan cheese as a really quick lunch. You could also drop it into other dishes at the end for a garlic kick.

I decided to freeze the pesto in easy single portion sizes so that I can enjoy it over the next few months (if it lasts that long!). I pulled out my trusty silicone ice cube tray and spooned the pesto in ready to be frozen. Once it is frozen just pop out the cubes and put in a freezer safe tub or bag.

I love my ice cube tray. It is a silicone one that produces little love hearts. I have had it since I was a student at university. It never makes ice now though – it is dedicated to freezing strong smelling food stuffs in small portions. be careful when freezing anything smelly in ice cube trays…you cant get the smell out after and your mojito would taste of garlic!

Frozen garlic

Oh I am a sucker for convenience in the kitchen. You could also call it being lazy! Much of the time I cant even be bothered to peel and chop garlic. The papery skins can be a proper nightmare to get off and it is much easier to pluck a bag of pre-prepared garlic out of the freezer and just whack in what you need. You do pay a premium for this ‘convenience’ and it comes wrapped in a little unrecycleable plastic baggie – this makes me sad. So in my bid to be more mindful about the waste I am creating but also keep the ease of use in my life I have created my own frozen garlic.

The stuff I buy from the store is just plain old minced garlic that will have been flash frozen so it doesn’t clump. I don’t have the space to do this in my freezer so I opted for mincing the garlic in my mini chopper, adding some olive oil to make it ‘spoonable’, and freezing it in a silicone ice cube tray. Once frozen I just pop them out into a freezer safe container so I can just ‘grab and use’ whenever I need.

It definitely is a bit of upfront work to create the convenience food that I am used to but I just listened to an audiobook whilst I did it. Because the garlic is still very fresh it was really easy to remove the skin from each bulb. It was actually quite a meditative task that I really enjoyed.

Garlic powder

I use dried garlic powder all the time. I go through numerous little pots of it in a year – its just so easy to sprinkle into whatever I am cooking. So, I decided to make my own. This was definitely more labour intensive in terms of the time it takes to do. But, the majority of it is hands off time spent in the dehydrator. I was gifted a Ninja all in one cooker thingy from my mum. It had been sitting on her countertop for a couple of years untouched. After much lusting after it she very kindly let me take it home (thank you, mum xx). It has a dehydrating function so I am able to dehydrate small batches of food. I would love something bigger but I simply don’t have space for anything more in my tiny little kitchen. I bought a dehydrating rack for it from Amazon and honestly, I can fit quite a bit in it now.

I have tried a couple of different ways to dehydrate the garlic. the first load I chopped the cloves in half, spread them on the trays, set the temp to 50 degrees C, and left it to do its thing. That took AGES. Like, stupidly long to dry. Almost 24 hours. I wasn’t having that.

So to try and cut down the drying time I bought a garlic slicer. This chopped the cloves into regular sized slices to be spread out and dried. It was a messy and sticky activity but it did dry much quicker – about 12 hours.

My third and final attempt was to whizz it up in my mini chopper, cut circles of greaseproof paper to sit on the dehydrating rack and spread out the mixture. It took about 9 hours to dry this way and it was far less sticky and messy to do. This will be my go to in future.

Dehydrating garlic does make your home stink! I like the smell to be fair, but I do open all the windows and doors and close the kitchen door to reduce the smell percolating through the whole house. You know when the garlic is finished when it becomes totally brittle. Once it is finished, leave it to cool completely, tip it into a clean jar with a good fitting lid and sit it on the counter for a few days. Every day give it a little shake and check for any moisture in the form of condensation or clumping of the granules. If you see this pop it back on the sheets and dehydrate some more. If left it will spoil and your efforts growing the bloody stuff and preparing it will have been wasted.

Once you are sure it is nice and dry and crispy, you can either store it as is and grind up into a powder as needed or whizz it in a blender until powdered and store it as powder right away.

I hope you enjoyed reading about my garlic preserving activities. How do you preserve your garlic?