Infinite Garlic Glitch

Rember playing The Sims and furiously typing in the, "Rosebud," cheat code over and over until you had enough Simoleons? Well, I found the closest thing to this in real life, the infinite garlic loop hack. I started in 2021 but I'm happy to report I finally have enough home grown garlic in 2024!

On my journey to visit my local Hannafords as little as possible, I realized I was going to need to grow my own garlic if I was going to continue being Italian. I found a beautiful 20 bulb braid of Red Russian garlic at a road side stand in Wallkill, NY and planted them in the fall of 2021. I harvested the first crop of garlic in June of 2022 and separated the larger bulbs from the smaller ones so I could re-plant the best stock and eat what was left. I repeated this method in 2022 and 2023 and now have enough garlic to supply my household all year!

Photo taken in April 2022 of Red Russian garlic planted in October of 2021, topped with leaf mulch.

I plant in the fall and cover the bed in leaf mulch to keep the bulbs warm and protected so that they can grow into the biggest bulbs possible. You'll see that nothing goes to waste in the Shongum Shadow gardens and that includes the leaves raked up from the yard. Whenever there is a chance to reuse or repurpose, it's taken.

April 2024 garlic crop

One of the best parts of growing your own garlic is cutting the garlic scapes you can cut off in the Spring. A garlic scape is the flower of the garlic and by cutting it off, you're redirecting the plant's energy to go back into the bulb rather than spend energy trying to flower and go to seed. These taste like garlic and have more of a fresh green flavor to them. They are delicious pickled, chopped like a green onion, or dried and powdered to be used like garlic powder.

Patrick holding a handful of garlic scapes.

In June, once the scapes have been cut and the garlic is ready to harvest, I pull them all and load them into the truck. Next, they sit in front of a fan on my back porch for two to three days to dry out before my better half and I separate the big ones out to replant and the smaller ones to braid and eat.

Garlic drying on the covered back porch.

Braiding the garlic is left up to Monica and once dry and all the dirt is brushed off, you can see the beautiful red stripes on the garlic that is signature to the Red Russian variety.

Garlic super braid!

Thanks for reading about my garlic adventures and how I unlocked the infinite garlic glitch in real life! I'm constantly learning and improving my gardening tactics as I learn new methods so let me know what's worked and not worked for you while growing garlic at home in the comments!