now is a good time to plant garlic

These garlic stems were gifted to us from a local shop owner whose mom runs a prolific local farm called Two Pony Farm. It wasn’t until we got home that and looked up “deerfield purple” that I realized what a lovely gift this is. We’ll probably re-plant one bulb’s worth of cloves, and eat the other two. I am excited to try it. Isn’t hand-grown foodstuffs one of the best gifts ever? I used to like homemade meal gifts, but now I think I appreciate an exquisite raw ingredient gift even more. Maybe that makes me weird, or maybe, it just means I spent a lot of time living in France where perfect raw ingredients are as revered as the final dish or perhaps more.

deerfield purple garlic

* Deerfield Purple (also known as Vietnamese Purple) is a rare, high-performing purple stripe hardneck garlic variety. It is quite beautiful to look at. Milder than some when raw, it holds its flavor well when roasted. Double the number of cloves from any porcelain garlic at 8-12 cloves per head typically. This is a newer variety in the USA that comes originally from Vietnam via a USDA seed bank in eastern Washington and then via a farm in Oregon that named it after themselves since the seed bank only gave it a number.