Garlic Festival in MA!

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i went to a garlic and arts festival over in Orange, MA yesterday! it was small but it was really fun! my sister lives about 30-45 minutes away from there so i picked her up and we headed over to it!

we got there around noon and didn't leave till sometime before 5 when it was supposed to get over. it's on a farm so it's not as expensive as going to a 'fair' like we have in my neck of the woods! only cost $5 to get in and they had shuttle buses to get from their parking lot up a hill, though they had a hiking path you could take to get there also. lots of craft vendors selling locally made goods and crafts, veggies, and especially their locally grown garlic!!!!

my sister got into gardening this year so she also bought some to try her hand at growing. she liked the festival too and thinks we should make it a tradition each year. i'd love to keep this going but it's about 2 1/2 hours for me to get there. there were also a few local bands playing that were just rocking the event! one vendor had hula hoops that she was custom making and decorating and the kids and some adults were loving them! they had a huge space in front of their tent to try out the different sizes and weights. i guess these are the newest fitness craze so my sister bought one that had water in it for herself and got one for my nephew. i just can't believe how much these go for. if i remember i heard the girl say they go up to $45 a piece!

i ended up getting 8 different varieties and 1 that was unknown just to try! on top of that i have 4 more i got this late summer. so now i have at least 12 different types to try and grow in my garden. i was hoping more vendors had samples to try of different garlic types so you could see what they actually tasted raw or cooked but no one seemed to have any like that. :/

well, i ended up with a few cloves each of: Italian Purple, Legacy, Polish Jen, Georgian Fire, Bavarian Purple, Rosewood, Siberian Red and German White. costs ranged from $1 a bulb to $17/lb. some of the bulbs i saw were decent sizes but i think some vendors got cleaned out early of their better bulbs and only had very small bulbs.

 

[lesa]

We just had our Garlic Festival in Little Falls, NY, last week. It is a fun day, here as well. Unfortunately, for the vendors- I had a great garlic harvest, so I didn't need anymore garlic. Can't believe it will time to plant in a couple weeks! Glad you enjoyed yours!

 

[897tgigvib]

I love it! A Garlic festival! Sounds like a whole lot of fun! Can't think of the guy's name, but there is some guy down in south california who has more varieties of garlic than i guess anyone in the world. Looks like you're getting a good start on your garlic collection.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

after i got home i tallied up my costs for everything and i realized had i bought all this from one of the suppliers online it probably would have cost me almost twice as much! i paid about $55 for everything i got yesterday and had fun seeing a lot of interesting stuff and meeting some local farmers that my sister intends to visit for a lot of her veggies and meats! (and she did some holiday shopping too!)

of course, the cost in gas to get down there probably took away the savings of the cost for all the garlic i got. but we both had a great time! now i wish i had bought one of those dibbles i saw there!

eta: Marshall, isn't the Gilroy Garlic festival over in California?

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

well, i have 2 more named garlic to add to my list i'm growing this year! i have Oregon Blue and Spanish Rojas coming!

and i had 2 bulbs i got from the grocery store a few months ago that really surprised me that were so large and clean looking that started sprouting in their keeper. these aren't the normal white skinned types the store usually carries and they were from the USA (don't know which part of the country they came from though :/ ) the 2 bulbs from the store look like an artichoke type with the layers of cloves and the slight purple skin.

so, lets make that 16 types of garlic in the ground for next summer's harvest! here's hoping some, if not all do great for me!

btw, what does everyone else like to grow for garlic and is there certain traits that you like, i.e. taste, heat, grows well because of certain conditions?

 

[thistlebloom]

Wow ChickiesMoma, 16 varieties! I'm impressed!
I planted garlic for the first time last fall from grocery store bulbs, then messed up the bed, but managed to harvest 6 heads anyway. This year I bought two varieties from the farmers market, really nice big heads too, they are Inchillium Red and Killarney.

What all do you do with all your garlic? If I harvest more than we'll eat fresh I thought I'd dehydrate some and pickle some. I read somewhere that even pickled, garlic retains all it's healthy benefits.

Edited to add that I'm such a garlic growing newbie that I don't yet know what I prefer in taste, or growing characteristics. But it's such a carefree crop to grow, and I love the harvest and replant in the same garden season cycle, that I wish I had started years ago.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

Thistle, didn't you do something like till the ground or replant something over them? the past few years i've tried getting garlic to grow one of my chickens would find it early in the spring and nibble the tops down to the ground and then dust bathe in the dirt till she had the small bulbs dug up and eaten too! :/

my dh is a big fan of putting garlic in everything he makes. he tends to like his food hot too so adding garlic just makes things hotter for him! he tend to use the granulated garlic we buy from the store but he's suddenly gotten into buying foods that are more natural or organic (but yet he still buys many things with sooo many chemicals in them ) so growing garlic will be a boon for him.

i have used garlic in tomato sauces i've made from my own, home grown stuff that i've canned. i also tend to use it in making garlic dill pickles. i'm hoping to make some garlic spread and butter, and i know my dh wants to make some minced garlic for his other favorite recipes. there are a lot of canning recipes i'd like to make using garlic in them, so i'm sure i will have enough with all the different types i have going.

i'm just finding out that there are different types of heat or mildness to them that i wanted to give quite a few different ones a try!

 

[thistlebloom]

Well I hope you do well and post the results from all your different varieties! If this years plantings do well I'm going to expand and try more varieties next year.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i didn't get a huge amount of bulbs of each variety. probably only on average from 3-4 bulbs of each. and being that most are Rocamboles or porcelains there were about about 15 cloves of each variety i got in the ground.