Elephant Garlic Seed (Rounds)

Do you want to try your own hand at growing your own elephant garlic? These, 'rounds' as they call them, if planted in mid to late October in northern regions will grow into fully formed elephant garlic bulbs with individual cloves. This is the typical 'elephant garlic' folks imagine when they think about holding it in their hand. 

So the thing is, elephant garlic is weird, it's more a leek than a garlic but was cultivated over the centuries to be like a garlic. BUT in it's own way it maintains a 'biennial' growth habit like onions and other alliums. So if you plant individual cloves, you get a 'round' like this which does not produce a yummy scape that season, but when planting rounds like this being sold here you get a delicious scape AND a fully formed bulb! 

PLANTING INSTRUCTIONS

Plant 4" deep, 6-8 apart in full sun in mid October. Keep soil moist, mulch in winter when you see it sprouting around November. Harvest when about half the plant has browned from the bottom, up. Don't yank the garlic out, but pry it out carefully from the ground up and not by the neck of the plant. 

SCAPE HARVEST

Around mid June you will see this super weird dorky looking thing pop up like a rocket straight up to the sky with a flower bulb at the top. Elephant garlic doesn't seem to curl like hardnecks do, so the way you know it's ready is when you start to see the paper around the flower bulb start to unravel. Then it's ready, cut it off with a pair of pruners at the base. Eat it raw, sauté it like asparagus or turn into a garlic pesto (This is the way...). Like asparagus, the bottom part of the stalk might be a bit to hard or stalky to eat, my rule of thumb is 'if you can bend it 90 degrees easily, it's pesto worthy'

Happy Growing!