- What if I told you that the garlic in front of me
is ready for its first harvest?
Because actually, there's three different ways
that we can harvest this delicious crop.
(mellow music)
The most common way of harvesting garlic
is when the bottom half of the leaves have turned brown.
You pull it up and then, you cure the bulb for a few weeks
and then, that'll last many months.
The second type of garlic harvest is wet garlic.
This is where you harvest a bulb as normal
but you don't cure it.
You actually use it fresh.
It's a lot juicier
and it has a much better flavor exchange in cooking.
In fact, I think it's a lot better than cured clove garlic.
And the third harvest is green garlic
which allows us to enjoy our garlic up to 12 weeks
before the usual harvest time,
and that's what we're gonna focus on in this video.
Green garlic is where you actually treat the harvest
a bit like a leek.
You don't actually worry about the bulb forming,
what you actually eat is the stem.
It's not a special variety of garlic or anything.
It's simply immature garlic, and it's delicious.
One of the benefits of green garlic
is that if you forget to sow your autumn garlic,
you can sow the spring varieties
and still have a chance of having a harvest.
Cause I struggle with spring varieties
to get it all the way to bulb stage or for it to bulb up.
However, you can still enjoy that garlicky flavor
without worrying about creating a bulb.
Before we talk about harvesting
and then, how to treat it as its own unique, individual crop
and make the most of it, in terms of your space,
it's really important to mention
that it's currently early May.
We're right in the center of the hungry gap,
but green garlic allows you
to have that beautiful garlic flavor profile in your cooking
during one of kinda the leanest times of year.
I, personally, would put green garlic up there
along the likes of purple sprouting broccoli and asparagus
in terms of importance of hungry-gap harvest
that you can get from your garden.
When it comes to harvesting green garlic,
it's really down to personal preference.
For me, I like to harvest it
when it's kind of the size of a small leek.
So here's a couple of things of green garlic, for example.
And here's, what I kind of call, a small leek, for context.
So when they get to around this size,
which is usually around 10, 12 weeks
before the final garlic harvest,
that is when I start to take up this green garlic.
Growing garlic specifically for green garlic
actually opens up a few opportunities for us gardeners
because the usual main garlic crop
will stay in until around mid-July to early August.
And that is a lot of bed space occupied
from October until then.
However, this garlic here, I'm treating as green garlic.
It's about to come out.
You know, I'm gonna harvest it all today
and it's surrounding where I've planted some carrots.
So I'm actually gonna take this out.
This perimeter is then gonna be free
for me to transplant these shallots in their place.
So already, the second crop of the season
is going in, in early May.
Before I share some clever ways of planting garlic,
so you can get green garlic and bulb garlic
in the same area for less space,
I've invited my colleague, Sam,
from chef.sam.black on Instagram.
Because Sam is, actually, by trade,
you're a professional chef.
So very often, it's kind of dangerous in the garden
because I'll be, "Oh, what could you do with this?"
or "What do you think about that?"
And I thought, well, let's rope you in
because you've got some recipes
that we'll be showing on our blog in a second.
But for someone who's harvested green garlic,
how on earth do you approach this in a kitchen?
- So, I would treat it, basically,
like a sweet garlicky leek-
- Okay.
- As an ingredient.
For the actual cooking of it,
treat it more like a leek than garlic.
Like, it can be used as a base to dishes,
but it's much nicer to celebrate
that kind of sweet, more delicate version of the flavor.
- It's a very special flavor and a very special crop.
Over, say, normal garlic, where you dry it
and then sometimes, it doesn't last the whole winter,
is there a way that we can actually preserve this
so we can enjoy it for the winter months?
- Yeah, so one of the nicest ways to do it,
because it's a very aromatic ingredient,
it works really well with fats.
So, actually, on the blog,
I've recently released a recipe
for making green garlic butter,
where you just gently saute your green garlic
in a portion of your butter to release those aromatics,
capture it in the fat, add it to much more butter,
with a pinch of salt,
blend it together
and then, balancing it into a sausage
that you can then stick in the freezer.
And then, whenever you need it,
you just cut a little disc off and chuck it in.
And it makes amazing garlic bread as well,
incredible garlic bread.
- And also, something like that is, cause of the shape,
it's quite easy to stick down the sides
of a freezer drawer or something.
- Yep, you can lose it pretty easily.
- Yeah. Well, that might be a good thing,
cause when you're having a sort out in winter,
you're like "Yes!"
- Yes. Sweet stash. - Reminiscent of spring.
So on our blog, "Farmer & Chef",
we actually have a fair few green garlic recipes
for you to try,
but is there any one in particular
you'd love to highlight and you could say,
"If you could only try it once, try it this way"?
- It probably sounds a little bit boring,
but we actually made a version of a leek and potato soup,
using green garlic instead of leeks.
(sheep bleating) Oh, my God!
Is it dying or something?
(huws sheep impressions)
- Yeah, it's got good diaphragm control, hasn't it?
(sheep bleats loudly)
(they giggle)
- So, one of the easiest and probably,
one of my favorite ways of doing it,
is we actually adapted a version of a leek and potato soup
where we took the leeks out and we put green garlic in.
And just that, that sweetness of it
really compliments the potatoes.
And we put a little bit
of wholegrain mustard in there as well, which was gorgeous.
- Yep. So if you need something to do
as soon as you harvest your first green garlic,
try the soup and everything else.
I quite like the look of that hummus,
but enjoy the recipes!
This is just a concept.
But when I plant out my garlic cloves,
usually they're around four inches or 10 centimeters apart.
One idea that I have that I'm gonna try this, well,
for the next growing season, is to actually plant the bulbs
around two inches, five centimeters, apart
and then, harvest every other one as a green garlic.
And then, leave the ones that are left over
to then grow normally and develop the bulbs,
which means in that same space behind me,
we can get two different crops
without having to actually expand the growing area.
One thing that I tried to experiment here in the Polycrub,
was to sow some garlic, which is growing to the right of me,
to treat as a green garlic crop
and to try and get it a month or two earlier.
But I think it's just honestly too warm in here.
What's happened is that they've got a lot of height,
but there's not much thickness in the stem.
However, I wouldn't discard growing garlic in a Polytunnel
because that's only got one layer of insulation
and that's something I'll try this year
with the hope of actually getting green garlic
about a month earlier than what I can outside.
But watch this space.
I believe that there's a lot of opportunity
for us to use green garlic as a core player
in our hungry gap and the way that we produce food
and approach self-sufficiency.
But if you've not grown garlic before,
or you're struggling to get good crops,
this video right here shows you the complete guide
from planting the cloves to harvesting
to get a really abundant garlic harvest from your space.