A Message from The Chief Clove:
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ANNOUNCING THE 2005 HARVEST!
The web site is now open for accepting advance orders! The spring weather was fairly strange in most of the major garlic growing regions, but in the end it has turned out to be a very good harvest across the nation. Here on the High Plains we even had excellent production from harder to grow varieties (at our altitude) such as French Rocambole, Creole Red and Burgundy , along with great softnecks of all kinds.

So we are most pleased to present the Class of 2005, with many old favorites and few new surprises. Remember, it is first come, first served. Some varieties are only available in very limited quantities and sell out quickly. Those in shortest supply are generally available only in the sampler packs. We have a dozen sampler packs in 4, 6 and 8 bulb sizes for those of you that just can’t make up your minds. So many garlics, so little time…

Elephants
Jumbo Roasting Bulbs
Big Elephant Bulbs
Baby Elephant Bulbs
Elephant Cloves
Elephant Rounds

Softnecks
Artichoke Varieties
Achatami
Acropolis Greek
Applegate
California Early
Chet's Italian Red
Early Red Italian
French Red
French Tarne
Inchelium Red
Kettle River Giant
Lorz Italian
Oregon Blue
Purple Italian
Randl Colorado White
Red Toch
Siciliano
Sicilian Gold
Simonetti
Susanville
Transylvanian

Silverskin Varieties
Nootka Rose
Silverwhite
Silverskin
Garlic Braids

Hardnecks
Purple Striped Varieties
Bogatyr
Brown Rose
Brown Tempest
Chesnok Red
Dominics
French Germinador
Korean Red
Metechi
Persian Star
Russian Giant
Siberian
Vekak Czech

Porcelain Varieties
Armenian
Georgia Crystal
Georgia Fire
German Extra Hardy
German Porcelain
German White
Music
Romanian Red
Rosewood
Polish Hardneck
Zemo

Rocambole Varieties
Colorado Black
German Red
GSF #65
Hokkaido Zaitai
Italian Purple
Killarney Red
Russian Red
Spanish Roja
Temptress

Others (Turbans,Asiatics)
Asian Tempest
Beijing
Chinese Pink
Guatemalan Ikeda
Morado Gigante
Shantung Purple
Sakura Japanese
Sonoran
Tuscan
Xian

PS: We still have not yet made a decision as to whether to offer giant flowering alliums for this year. The reason being that they will not be arriving from Holland this year until about October 1 st, which is pretty late for some of you. We would like to hear from those of you who were looking forward to trying some of these beautiful flowers in your garden next season. Just drop us an email note.

Questions and Comments
You can always email TheGarlicStore.com with your garlic questions at TheChiefClove@TheGarlicStore.com. But if you would like your question and answer in an upcoming issue of The Garlic Store Gazette, just drop us a line. We can publish your favorite garlic pictures too (just send them as an email attachment).

Published by: www.TheGarlicStore.com at Yucca Ridge Farm, 46050 Weld County Road 13, Fort Collins, CO 80524. A member of the Better Business Bureau Online. Email us at: TheChiefClove@TheGarlicStore.com

HOW OLD IS GARLIC?
Or more properly, how long have humans been domesticating the king of the alliums, which probably has its ancestral home deep in central Asia ? There are cave drawings which include garlic bulbs that may go back some 10,000 years. Garlic bulbs where found in the tombs of ancient Egyptian Pharaos, dating back 6000 years. The written evidence for garlic use goes back to ancient China , more than 4000 years BCE. Supposedly the local emperor’s food taster messed up, and the potentate ingested the leaves of a yu-yu plant, an efficient way to quickly join your esteemed ancestors. Fortunately the court physician was quick on the uptake and produced an immediate antidote, cloves of the suan plant (garlic). The Yellow Emperor, as the lucky monarch became known, is considered one of the founders of traditional Chinese medicine. The Egyptians caught up medically around 3500 BCE, when issues of The Daily Papyrus ran stories which listed garlic as a remedy for almost two dozen ailments.

FESTIVAL SEASON
It is often reputed that America ’s first garlic festival was a really garlicky menu created at Alice Waters’ landmark Chez Pannisse restaurant in Berkeley, CA back in 1976. Whoever actually organized the first garlic festival is probably more than amazed at the proliferation of this type of odiferous event. The great Gilroy garlic gambit has just ended out in California with over 100,000 garliholics soaking up the flavors (along with quite a lot of beer as I remember it). But there are three more months of garlic festivals left. The latest to announce is the Cox Arboretum Garlic Festival in Dayton , OH on 8-9 October. (Call 937-434-9005 if you need further info). And if Dayton isn't exotic enough, big festivals are coming up on the Isle of Wight in the English Channel and in Transylvania. Check out this site if your Romanian is good: http://www.botosani.eu.org/. And don’t forget Saugerties , NY at the end of September! (Go to the local boy scouts’ stand and try their fabulous garlic soup!) Check out our festival listings. And if you know of other fun festivals we have missed, email us and we will add them in.

GREEN SIDE UP
There is the old joke about the sod layers with the punch line “Green side up!” Actually there are several dozen variants. But which side is up for a garlic clove? Turns out there is a correct orientation for planting. The small scab, or basal plate, at the base of the clove is where the new roots will emerge, and naturally, they should be on the bottom, with the more pointed end of the clove pointing up. That is, if you hand plant. But big operations often machine plant, and to our knowledge no one has yet been clever enough to make a machine that will consistently plant with basal plate down, or pointed tip up. Turns out, most of the time garlic, when planted at random orientations, will right itself in the soil to the correct orientation. Occasionally this will not happen, and a bulb will have a bent stem. So, as long as you are doing it by hand, you might as well give the clove a little extra help and plant pointed side up. Of course you can really challenge nature and plant an entire bulb upside down. That may be asking nature for too much. For fun we tried that and got a rather confused looking plant…but the green side was up!

WE GET LETTERS
We try to answer emails and letters from those folks with pressing questions about garlic. Then one asked, “Could you help settle a family argument. They say if you eat garlic, it makes your private parts smell.”
So….how would you have replied?????

GARLIC: IT’S NOT FOR THE BIRDS
At least European starlings do not like the scent of garlic. Today there may be more than 200 million of the pesky, crop eating birds in the US. This is all the more amazing, since 150 years ago there were none, until some bright light released some of them in New York City in the late 1800s. Many farmers consider them a major nuisance and all manner of methods, including poison and nuclear weapons (not really) have been used, without great success. But recently an article in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry found that starlings dislike anything which contains garlic oil in less than 1% concentration. So perhaps allium sativum can take on yet another key task. Better living through natural chemistry.

But while starlings annoy, there are few things in this age of insect born diseases that are funkier than a skeeter’s tweeter (our apologies to Tina Turner). Which allows us to segue right into our new products section….

NEW PRODUCTS:

5006 Child and Pet Safe MOSQUITO BARRIER,  1 quart, $16.95
More than just a nuisance, mosquitos are a major carrier of disease. But spraying yards and gardens with toxic pesticides often makes the solution seem worse than the problem. Finally, a purely natural, 99.3% garlic-based, natural mosquito repellent that works. Safe around children, pets and fish. One quart lasts 2 to 4 weeks (through several rainstorms) and covers 1.25 acres. Becomes odorless to humans in a few hours, but repels skeeters, as well as some ticks and flees, for weeks. Does not impart a garlic taste to your garden vegetables. Can be applied with a garden hose sprayer.

1829 Original Spiced Beans, $5.95

BABY GREEN GARLIC ™
Let us remind you about the new garlic treat, Baby Green Garlic™. It is a fresh garlic product available all year around. TheGarlicStore.com serves as the online consumer source for Baby Green Garlic™ from Ophios, LLC, a leading hardneck garlic research company in Rhode Island . Baby Green Garlic™, grown from hardneck garlic bulbils, is a long, tender green shoot of pure garlic flavor. It is a versatile vegetable product perfect as a garnish and in salads, soups and sandwiches. The mild garlic flavor provides added taste to your favorite dishes without any bitterness or unfavorable after-taste or odor. Baby Green Garlic™ is a gourmet product already being used by top restaurant chefs. Greenhouse grown, the shoots are harvested fresh and shipped to you via Priority Mail anywhere in the country. See our online recipe section below for some creative serving ideas.

The Garlic Grower’s Video/ DVD
We call it “A Garlic Gardener’s Guide.” This 32 minute production shows you the tricks of the trade to grow your own top flight garlic, as well as providing some historical facts about the history of garlic, along with fun scenes from the great Gilroy Festival. Available now as either VHS tape ($19.95 plus S&H) or DVD ($24.95 plus S&H)