LIVE TO COOK

My Green Garlic Plants August 14, 2008

However well I try to follow a proper way and grow a plant, it didn’t seem to happen that way. If I try to do one thing, It turns out to be the other. That is how I got to know about the green garlic plants last winter.

I came across a couple of red radishes that I had bought for salads, sprouting in the fridge. With huge dreams of harvesting loads and loads of radish greens for cooking, I tucked them in a pot of soil. Not to disappoint me, they grew well. When they were about 2 – 3 inches tall, the weather played a wicked role. We got heavy snow storm that shunned the Sun. In spite of the additional light that I provided, the roots of the plants started to rot inviting white flies.

I was worried and searched for indoor pest control ideas. Among the ideas I found, I liked the natural ones. One of them was to spray garlic scented water on the affected plant (crush couple of garlic cloves and add to 1 gallon of water). The other was to tuck couple of garlic cloves in the soil of the affected plant.

Surprisingly, the pest control ideas worked and controlled the white flies. I pulled the radish greens and used in salads. I left the pot as is with a plan to put it in trash after the soil dries out. A week later, I noticed that the garlic cloves had started to shoot. I didn’t know the uses for the garlic plant. I left the plant to grow as it acted as pest control for other indoor plants.

Garlic Buds

But the fate of the garlic plants took a drastic turn when I came across a bag of frozen garlic in our Asian groceries. I inquired the store assistant and she told me that the garlic plants can be used similar to scallions. Then what, I turned like Aesop’s farmer and took the scissors. My garlic plant turned to be the “Golden Goose“. I used the garlic shoots in soups and stir fries. I am hooked to the mild garlicky flavor and have started to grow them regularly.

Garlic with large leaves

Garlic is an easy to grow indoor plant. All we need is a moist soil, few cloves of garlic from our pantry and a place near bright window. Within a week or so they will start to shoot. As they grow, if we cut the larger leaves, new leaves will form. We can keep on cutting like this until the plant dries out and no new leaves appear. The leaves freeze well. So we can collect them in freezer bags for future use. The things that we have to know is, to develop a garlic bulb, the plant needs direct sun and warmth of ground. Please note that indoor garlic plants don’t produce bulbs (which I came to know after pulling couple of grown ups and watching the underneath 😛 )

cut garlic leaves

Stay tuned for my next post where I will share with you a recipe that I prepared using these garlic plants and join the Great Green Thumbs in Grow Your Own event with my green pinkie! 🙂