divaqs's Blog
divaqs's posts about: Elephant Garlic
May 21, 2007 | 9:01 AM PST
Tags: Elephant Garlic , Allium Ampeloprasum , garlic , winter garden
As part of my attempts of doing year round gardening, I over-winter garlic and elephant garlic. Personally, I prefer elephant garlic (Allium Ampeloprasum) more than normal garlic. My reasons being that I find the elephant garlic’s milder and slightly sweeter taste and larger size of cloves to be better for roasting. Don’t get me wrong, I like garlic and use it all the time in my cooking, but when it comes to roasting garlic with some pot roast or a tinfoil dinner, a clove of elephant garlic is best. One of my single cloves of elephant garlic is often as big as or even bigger than a complete bulb of normal garlic.
Here is a picture from a couple of weeks ago of some I have growing in my garden.
This picture is a southern facing hill that I terraced into rows of garden beds. I use boards as movable walkways that I can change to different levels from year to year as part of my plant rotation.
Elephant garlic is actually not real garlic, but more closely related to leaks. I believe it gets its name from the size of the bulbs, which I would say are between a baseball and a softball in size in my garden, which look a lot like giant garlic bulbs and have a somewhat similar taste.
Three years ago I purchased elephant garlic from a seed catalog and for the first time planted it in my garden in the fall. Since then I have saved the best cloves and replanted in the fall from that summer’s cloves. Each year I have planted a little more. This year I think I might have more than I can use in a year.
I’ve read that some people use the young unopened flowering heads as a vegetable. I am considering trying this in a stir-fry and seeing how my kids react.
The plant, if left alone, will spread into a clump with many flowering heads. These can be left in flower gardens to discourage pests, though the plants have always looked kind of like corn stalks to me, which I’ve never thought very ornamental.
In this picture you can get a sense of the difference of size of normal garlic plants to elephant garlic plants.
The sad looking plants in the foreground are an early variant of garlic called Chinese pink garlic, which are full size and will be ready to harvest soon. My dog has been laying among them, which resulted in the sad condition you see them in.
The next row up is my elephant garlic. They are starting to form flower heads and put on the last of their height. I’ve seen these plants get as much as 4 feet in height.
Behind my elephant garlic is asparagus, which is beginning to show its natural fern form.
