Braiding Garlic

Growing garlic comes naturally enough in my fridge, despite that it's taken me years to actually get the bulbs out of my kitchen and into my little apartment side garden.

Last fall I decided to splurge for some farmer's market variety rather than the readily-sprouting mesh-bag in my fridge and planted it in my garden.

If forgot about it until Spring time when it started shooting up. Long curly scapes were snipped as per Salt Spring Island farmer's market garlic-growers to enhance the size of the bulbs. When the sun finally started shining I neglected to water my poor little bulbs so they dried up.

I washed the heads and braided the tails. They looked gorgeous on my kitchen wall until I stripped all the cloves down while making pickles. Half the purple heads were deskinned and pickled with the cucumbers while the other half are waiting to go back into the ground for more garlic next year!