Pot Luck

Elephant garlic (4.00 / 3)

I was doing a bit of followup of our discussions about garlic, and found this about elephant garlic:

Garlic and Elephant Garlic

Elephant Garlic

Giant, or elephant garlic was re-discovered in 1941 by an American nurseryman, Jim Nicholls, who found it growing wild in the gardens of an abandoned settlement called Scio in the Willamette Valley of Oregon. Scio had been colonised by immigrants from the eastern Balkans in the 1860s. The "herb", as it was regarded locally, was called Scio's Giant Garlic.

Nicholls collected about 12lbs of it and bred selectively from the larger cloves. Over a period of twelve years he established a large, very hardy, disease free strain which he started selling commercially in 1953, having registered the name 'Elephant Garlic'.

I believe that elephant garlic is the cash crop of the future. It is six times the size of normal garlic, but occupies the same amount of land and gives a yield of six to ten tons to the acre. It is slightly milder in flavour than standard garlic.

Quite a lot of entrepreneurs capitalised on it, so Nicholls now refuses to sell it to other commercial growers - or to export it. A very inferior strain is now grown commercially in Chile - Safeways sell it - but the heads (head is the correct term for a whole garlic bulb) have generally been treated with a chemical growth inhibitor.

I don't know anything about growth inhibitor chemicals, don't know what types of chemicals are used, but in reading up on rice, I learned that rice is sometimes soaked in bleach (sodium hypochlorite solution) for 20 minutes, and then rinsed thoroughly, before mechanical planting. This is to eliminate something that might inhibit germination, as I recall. I wonder if soaking growth-inhibited elephant garlic in bleach would restore at least some germination potential.

I wonder if Nicholls is still alive, or his company has passed to the control of others. I'll look it up.

Elephant Garlic flowers are very pretty. Another cash crop?

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by: count @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 02:17:15 AM UTC

It was Nick Nichols who found the elephant garlic. (4.00 / 3)

The article you cited, and others I have seen, give the name Jim, but they are wrong.

The rest of the story is true. Nick found it in Scio, where it had been planted by immigrants from the Balkans. Until those immigrants brought it to Oregon, elephant garlic had only been grown in the Balkans.

Nichols Garden Nursery is indeed still in business. Nick and his wife started the company 60 years ago,and it is still family run. I believe his daughter and her husband run things now.

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by: caseyOR @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 06:40:35 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Thank you! nt (4.00 / 2)

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by: count @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 07:28:19 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Onion scapes (4.00 / 3)

Joanne has discussed garlic scapes, so I thought "Why not onion scapes?" Sure enough,

onion scapes

I found a few small onions just beginning to bolt, with tight-closed buds (walla walla sweets that missed harvest last year). The onion scape is hollow and pretty much the same as the leaves. The onions were still sound (fully bolted onions are gross) so I just sliced the entire thing and sauteed slowly in olive oil. All parts were really good. Added pecorino romano, grated lemon peel, black pepper and dressed pasta with it.

This probably isn't information that is useful in a practical way, however. From ONION PLANTING:

Flowering -- Abnormal For Onions; Normal For Garlic

Most folks want to grow onion bulbs NOT onion flowers! What causes bulb onions to send up flower stalks? Flowering of onions can be caused by several things but usually the most prevalent is temperature fluctuation. An onion is classed as a biennial which means it normally takes 2 years to go from seed to seed. Temperature is the controlling or triggering factor in this process. If an onion plant is exposed to alternating cold and warm temperatures resulting in the onion plant going dormant, resuming growth, going dormant and then resuming growth again, the onion bulbs prematurely flower or bolt. The onion is deceived into believing it has completed two growth cycles or years of growth in its biennial life cycle so it finalizes the cycle by blooming. Flowering can be controlled by planting the right variety at the right time. Use only transplants that are pencil-sized or smaller in diameter when planting in early spring or always plant seed, NEVER transplants, in early fall in Texas Zones III - V (USDA Zones 8 and 9).

DON'T plant garlic in the spring! Bulb formation in garlic occurs in response to the lengthening days of spring, and bulbing and maturity are considerably hastened if temperatures are high. In addition to these requirements, the dormant cloves (divisions of the large bulb) or young growing plants must be exposed to cold temperatures between 32 and 50 degrees F. for one or two months in order to initiate bulbing. Plants that are never exposed to temperatures below 65 degrees F. may fail to form bulbs. With fall plantings, the cold treatment is accomplished quite naturally throughout the winter, but a spring planting spells disaster in Texas Zones III - V (USDA Zones 8 and 9)

What To Do About Flowering?

What can one do if flower stalks appear? Should the flower stalks be removed from the onion plants? Suit yourself but once the onion plant has bolted, or sent up a flower stalk, there is nothing you can do to eliminate this problem. The onion bulbs will be edible but smaller. Use these onions as soon as possible because the green flower stalk which emerges through the center of the bulb will make storage almost impossible. Seedstalk formation (bolting) of garlic is not induced by exposure to fluctuating temperatures, as is the case with onions, which means that a wide range of fall planting dates is permissible for this crop. Seedstalk formation is also not damaging to garlic since the cloves are arranged around the seedstalk and will be removed from the dried seedstalk. Conversely, the edible onion bulb is penetrated by the seedstalk which is hard when the bulb is harvested, but prematurely decays causing loss of the entire bulb in storage. When the tops become yellowish and partly dry, garlic is ready for harvest.

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by: count @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 02:32:29 AM UTC

Calcots are (4.00 / 3)

essentially, the flower stalk that a second year onion sends up in the spring. I have between 1,200 and 1,400 onions planted so far, some red, some yellow. I planted so many so that I can go through in the fall and plant lots of large bulbs for calcots that I should be able to pick and offer my CSA subscribers next Feb and March.

I had a few Walla Walla Sweets go to seed last year. Normally I would have cut the scape off, but I wanted to have some seed and there were only 4 or 5 flowers our of over 400 bulbs, so I figured I could afford to let those go.

Harold has a way to plant onion seed that I'm going to dedicate this seed to. You broadcast the seed onto the ground and scratch it in. Then you stack brush over the ground you just seeded and scatter straw over that. What happens is the onions grow up through the brush and wind up like a small leek, but it's not a leek, it's a huge green onion. Should taste a lot like a Calcot. If I use Walla Walla Sweet seed and grow in a low sulpher soil, should be sweet too.

I'm going to use branches from the Christmas trees we've been feeding to the goats for the brush. You want the pile the onions are growing in to be airy, not dense. Should also keep the land sharks out of the onion patch.

I'm going to try it with the yellow onion and red onion bulb sets too. They're pretty innexpensive, I can afford to buy half a pound of each for an experiment.

On the Christmas trees, we get them free after Christmas, and Harold knows a grower who was culling his plantation. The goats get the trees to munch on, and they love the needles which they strip from the little trees. Then I take the nekkid trees, mostly douglas firs, and tie them to a stake so they don't fall over. I plant peas around the perimiter of the trees, which support the pea vines as they grow. When the peas are kaput, I untie the tree from the post and toss it, vines and all into the pen of very appreciative goats, who procede to eat all of the vines off the tree. When the tree is nekkid again, it goes back and I plant peas around it again, starting the cycle all over again.

How's that fer recycling and repurposing?

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

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by: JoanneRigutto @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 10:24:13 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

You continue to amaze. nt (4.00 / 1)

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by: count @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 16:56:57 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

Hehe (4.00 / 2)

Just doin' my best to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.

;-)

Normal people scare me.... But not as much as I scare them.

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by: JoanneRigutto @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 17:04:38 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

absinthe (4.00 / 2)

The George W. Bush administration did not do only bad things. Yeah, I was surprised to discover that.

From the Absinthe wiki:

On March 5, 2007, the French Lucid brand became the first genuine absinthe to receive a COLA (Certificate of Label Approval) for legal importation into the United States since 1912,[39][40] following independent efforts by representatives from Lucid and Kübler to topple the long-standing U.S. ban.[41] In December 2007, St. George Absinthe Verte, produced by St. George Spirits of Alameda, California, became the first brand of American-made absinthe to be legally produced in the United States since the enactment of the ban.[42][43] Since that time, other micro-distilleries have started making small batches of high-quality absinthe in the U.S.

How does a person drink absinthe?

How to Serve Absinthe

I've never tried it. I don't know that I want to buy a bottle, but I'll look around for a place that serves it the traditional (French) way.

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by: count @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 03:08:35 AM UTC

It was briefly all the rage... (4.00 / 2)

When Marilyn Manson was drinking it all up at The Palms when it became legal in 2007, but it seems to be a fad that died out quickly... At least here in Vegas. I sometimes see it on restaurant wine & spirit menus, but that's it.

Act on Principles and make equality happen.

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by: atdleft @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 03:38:30 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

St. Germain liqueur (4.00 / 2)

I came across the absinthe information while researching something I noticed in a liquor store recently, St. Germain liqueur, which was released to the world in 2007. Might be interesting, but if it goes for $35/759 ml, looks like about $15 might be for the bottle.

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by: count @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 03:17:39 AM UTC

Oh jeez, we have a crisis on our hands... (4.00 / 2)

Mr. ELV thinks he doesn't like Vietnamese food. I think he hasn't tried "the real deal" in Little Saigon. However, this does confirm something I just didn't want to believe... It really IS difficult to find good pho in this town!

Act on Principles and make equality happen.

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by: atdleft @ Thu Mar 18, 2010 at 03:29:04 AM UTC