Hi Phantom, We live in the Bay Area (about 25 miles S of San Francisco on the coast) and are going into our 4th season growing garlic in our raised beds and wine barrels (we planted 400 bulbs last year but lost at least half the harvest to white rot ... another sore topic). So to answer your questions: 1. We buy many varieties of garlic primarily from filareefarm.com and our favorite, "Kettleriver", from thegarlicstore.com. Also great are the "Inchelium Red" (softneck) and "Armenian" (hardneck). I highly recommend the book "The Great Garlic Book" by Chester Aaron to give you a delightful introduction to the stinking rose. Aaron's book has beautiful illustrations and his writing will convince you to put garlic in every single meal you prepare. (I don't recommend mixing it w/ pineapple though!) 2. Hardneck garlics (allium ophioscorodon) produce a flower stalk called a "scape" and produce gorgeous bulbs (normally smaller than softnecks) with a single circle of cloves that easily break off the center stalk with a twist. Softnecks (allium sativum) are believed to have evolved from hardnecks. These include your supermarket "Silverskins" and are often chosen for their longer shelflife (10-12 months) - another characteristic of softnecks. It can take pages to explain the differences but this should get your started and hopefully understand that both types produce great varieties! Aaron will give you the nitty-gritty. "Growing Great Garlic" by Ron Engeland is another must-read for garlic-lovers. 3. To keep them from sprouting too early, you might consider keeping them in a dry, dark place at about 55F. 4. Garlic is normally planted in the autumn before the ground hardens, and harvested in the summer so for TN, you probably put them in the ground at the right time. We have planted supermarket garlic in our area before and have had pretty decent luck with them -- even braiding them. Just remember that garlic love sun! 5. We have 6 wine barrels (standard kind you can find in CA drug or hardware stores) sawed in half (so figure at least an 18" soil depth) and plant 12 seeds per barrel. Apart from the darned white rot (any advice here is most appreciated), garlic has thrived both in our raised beds and barrels. Incidentally, we plant bush beans once we harvest our garlic in June/July to fix nitrogen back in the soil for the next season! See the URL below to see hubby all set to harvest garlic out of the wine barrel :-)and some photos of the varieties we've grown. My dad was experimenting with his new digital Nikon so these images look slick. The varieties we've liked and tested apart from the above were: Xian, Siberian, Russian Red Toch, Spanish Roja, Chesnok, Polish Hardneck, Music, Shandong -- and a few others. But we love the Kettleriver and Armenian best. Be aware that different varieties will thrive in certain climates, e.g. Spanish Roja generally like cold winters so we're not very successful with them here in the Bay Area. Good luck! Get ready for 40-Clove Chicken (or Tofu) this summer! Gigi Here is a link that might be useful: Garlic in Wine Barrels and 2006 Varieties

Melissia, There are different ways to do it. Some people, for example, wash it after harvest and others only brush off the dirt with their hands. Some trim back the greens and roots fairly soon after harvest and others don't. Some trim them a lot and some trim them a little and others don't trim them much at all. Some hang it to dry while others spread it out on screens or wire racks, or even on tabletops covered with several layers of newspaper (to absorb any moisture so it doesn't become trapped between the bulb and the table). I think that what you do to cure your garlic often is determined by your soil and by how wet or how dry your garlic is when harvested. Ideally, you would withhold water that last couple of weeks to the garlic can dry down some on its own right before you harvest it, but in some parts of Oklahoma that have heavy May and June rains, that is not always possible. When I harvest garlic, I usually brush off the dirt by hand if it is dry. If it is fairly moist, I let it dry for a day and brush off the dirt that has dried. If there still is a lot of dirt, I brush it off every day. My father taught me to never wash onions, garlic or potatoes with water after harvesting them because he felt it lengthened their curing time and shortened their storage time. (When I was a little kid, I couldn't understand why he stored "dirty potatoes" no matter how many times he told me. I just wanted to wash them!) Thus, I hate to use water because the wrappers get wet and sometimes shrivel or even can mildew if there is high humidity. Sometimes I use a little vegetable scrub brush from my kitchen to gently brush off stubborn dirt. I normally cure mine by laying them on wire racks in 100% shade---you don't want direct sun or dew/rainfall on it after it is harvested. The amount of time I cure it varies depending on how wet or dry the garlic was when harvested and also depending on how humid the air is. This year, it's been REALLY humid, so the curing time will be longer rather than shorter. It can vary from a week or two if the garlic and the air are really pretty dry to start out with or three weeks or more if the garlic and soil were pretty wet and the air remains humid. In really wet years, I have cured it endlessly...probably 4 to 6 weeks....because it had a high water content when harvested and high humidity remained in the air constantly. To store it, you want to keep it in moderate humidity out of direct sunlight and at moderate temperatures. Some years I have stored it on wire shelves in my pantry. My pantry is dark and cool as it sits under an interior stairway in the very center of the house. Other years, I have stored it tied in bundles and hanging from storage shelves in my tornado shelter, which doubles as a root cellar. It has really cool temperatures, decent humidity and is dark and dry so it is an ideal place to store garlic, onions, potatoes and they last forever when stored in there. The daytime highs in the summer still stay mostly in the 70s in the tornado shelter, so it is a great storage space. If you don't have room for a lot of garlic in your pantry, anywhere in the house that the temperature and humidity stay at a fairly constant level is good. In my house, the floor of an upstairs storage closet works well for interior storage too because it is in the very center of the house so its temperature/humidity stay fairly constant. You can store it in net bags, in doubled brown paper bags, in bundles tied or braided togther and hanging from a shelf, or in a terra cotta storage crock or flower pot covered with a lid. When I move it from curing to storage, I do clip off much of the roots, but I leave a somewhat longer stem on it than you'll find with grocery storage garlic...maybe an inch or two. Remember to save enough to replant in the fall, or you can replant small cloves right after you harvest. I do that pretty often. The stuff I replant won't do much right after it is replanted, but it keeps me from 'forgetting' to plant garlic in fall because I'm too busy harvesting and putting up other crops. People who have high soil moisture level might not have success with replanting right after harvest, but it has worked for me every time I've done it. Properly cured garlic that is stored at medium humidity and moderate interior temperatures (not wildly varying temps like you'd have in a garage, barn or shed in OK in the summer) will last for months and months. I find it lasts a lot longer without sprouting than most grocery store garlic. You can grow whatever you want in the area where you had garlic, harvest it and then replant garlic there in the autumn. I usually put fall tomatoes in that spot and then plant garlic there after they have been removed. I like to add compost to the spot before the garlic goes back in, especially since I have clay soil and drainage is always an issue. Dawn

Garlic, like tulips and many other bulbs and seeds requires stratification in order to grow. That is they must be chilled for a period of time and then warmed......then they will sprout. It's the biology thing that allows seeds to be dropped in the fall, sleep under a blanket of snow and sprout in the spring. It's the process that allows you to find fresh tulips at a florist in Februrary. Those bulbs have spent at least 6 weeks in a refrigerator, and then were brought out into a warmer greenhouse. It's not the cold or the warm that makes garlic sprout....but the warm AFTER the cold that triggers the mechanism. Garlic you buy fresh form the grower now should easily last all winter....if they have not been chilled to trigger the sprouting.

Jasdip: Gilroy, California is the garlic capital of the USA if not the world. Here is a link to a website that ships garlic. Also gives info on how to store and expected storage life span. If their long distance free phone number is not accessible for you in Canada, at the very top of the page is a link for sending them an e-mail about shipping to Canada. I share your feelings about any food product made in China! I would rather try to grow my own. Speaking of that, go to Google and type in the search words: growing garlic. If garlic can be grown in Minnesota I would think you could do it where you live. Here is a link that might be useful: The Garlic Shoppe