A MESSAGE FROM THE CHIEF CLOVE

You are receiving our quarterly complimentary email newsletter because you have explicitly signed up for it, requested our catalog or have purchased products from www.TheGarlicStore.com . If for any reason you do not wish to continue receiving our newsletter, simply click here , and follow the instructions to unsubscribe. Remember: We value your privacy. We will not supply any information about you, including email addresses, to third parties. In our ninth year on the Internet, we hope you will enjoy this next issue of our “ezine” created for our friends in the garlic gardening and gourmet cooking community. And to be sure that changes in your spam filters don’t block future issues, you may wish to add thechiefclove@TheGarlicStore.com to you accept list.

THE 2007 HARVEST IS SHIPPING
The 2007 crop has been harvested, cured, packaged and is being readied for shipping. You can easily monitor which varieties are available for this year, which are already shipping or which can be advance ordered (AO) for shipment by mid-September by checking the “What’s Available for 2007” link at the top, middle of the home page http://thegarlicstore.com/index.cgi/GROUND.html.
We update this page almost daily. Many of the varieties are available in limited quantities, so do not wait too long to order if you want to guarantee that you will receive your favorites. The sold out (SO) symbol lets you know that the earlier bird got the bulb, to mix a metaphor.

But what to order? So many garlics, so little garden space. The basic choices boil down to selections from the softnecks, hardnecks and elephant varieties. Most folks try a few of each. Softnecks are easiest to grow, have a long shelf life, intense flavor, are best for braiding, and thrive in all climates. The hardnecks are distinguished by the production of scapes (both decorative and edible) which mature into the hard necked central stalk, large easy-to-peel cloves, the most complex and sophisticated of flavors, will grow almost anywhere and are especially tolerant of harsh winters. The elephants are the largest bulbs with easy to peel super cloves and with a milder but still complex taste and long shelf life. They can grow anywhere, including the Deep South and make the perfect roasting garlic.For those suffering from terminal indecision or wanting to try a wide selection to see which varieties do the best in your local soil and weather conditions, we are offering a variety of 4-, 6- and 8-packs again this year.

NEED MORE INFO?
WWW.TheGarlicStore.com is designed to meet all your garlic needs. Yes, we provide the planting stock, but also tons of useful information on growing, harvesting, curing, sorting and cooking. Use the many online resources on the website simply by clicking on the top banner or the links on the left side of the page. Under the GARLIC INFO tab alone you can find dozens of pages of garlicky news, including:

Recipes
Preparing Garlic
Storing Garlic
Cooking with Garlic - Garlic Odor
Customer Comments
Garlic FAQs
Garlic Festivals
Garlic in the News
Garlic Seed Foundation
Hot Garlic Sites and Other Links
How to Grow Garlic
Restaurant Reviews
Test your Garlic IQ
The Garlic Library
The Quotable Clove
Tips for Visitors to The Garlic Store
What's in the Ground this Year?
Garlic Bibliography
Culinary/Historical Bibliography
Horticulture Bibliography
Medical/Therapeutic Bibliography

BACK ISSUES OF THE GARLIC STORE GAZETTE
We email our newsletter to our opt-in subscribers four times each year. Sometimes spam filters or other computer gremlins prevent them from arriving. But have no fear. Just click your way to the home page of www.TheGarlicStore.com. Scroll down to the bottom left and you will find a link not only to the latest edition, but to all prior issues.

STRANGER THAN FICTION
This story happened a while ago in Sydney, and while it has nothing to do with garlic, it's true, and is almost as scary as forgetting to place your garlic order for fall planting:

John Bradford, a Sydney University student, was on the side of the road hitch-hiking on a very dark night and in the midst of a storm. The night was rolling on and no car went by. The storm was so strong he could hardly see a few feet ahead of him. Suddenly he saw a car slowly coming towards him and stopping. John, desperate for shelter and without thinking about it, got in the car and closed the door, just to realize there was nobody behind the wheel and the engine wasn't on!

The car started moving slowly. John looked at the road and saw a curve approaching. Scared, he started to pray, begging for his life. Then, just before he hit the curve, a hand appeared through the window and turned the wheel. John, paralyzed with terror, watched how the hand repeatedly came through the window but never harmed him. Shortly thereafter John saw the lights of a pub down the road so, gathering strength, jumped out of the car and ran to it.

Wet and out of breath, he rushed inside and started telling everybody about the horrible experience he had just experienced. A silence enveloped the pub when everybody realized he was crying and wasn't drunk.

Suddenly two other people walked into the same pub. They, like John, were also wet and out of breath. Looking around and seeing John Bradford sobbing at the bar, one said to the other, "Look, Bruce ... there's that bloody idiot that got in the car while we were pushing it."

INVESTMENT TIPS
Tired of watching the stock market yo-yo and gyrate all over the place? Feel like investing is like going to Las Vegas (except without the cheap breakfasts?) Well, the following are some hot stock tips on pending mergers that are likely to make those on the inside some serious profits:

Hale Business Systems, Mary Kay Cosmetics, Fuller Brush, and W. R. Grace Co. Will merge and become: Hale, Mary, Fuller, Grace.

Polygram Records, Warner Bros., and Zesta Crackers join forces and become: Poly, Warner Cracker.

3M will merge with Goodyear and become: MMMGood.

Zippo Manufacturing, Audi Motors, Dofasco, and Dakota Mining will merge and become: ZipAudiDoDa.

FedEx is expected to join its competitor, UPS, and become: FedUP.

Fairchild Electronics and Honeywell Computers will become: Fairwell Honeychild.

Grey Poupon and Docker Pants are expected to become: Poupon Pants.

Knotts Berry Farm and the National Organization of Women will become: Knott NOW!

A NEW GARLIC RECIPE FOR YOU…
Some flavors are simply made for each other, such as garlic and lamb. This succulent garlicky roast is a fall classic - and oh, so satisfying!

Roast Leg of Lamb with Garlic and Rosemary
1 leg of lamb
5 garlic cloves, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, minced
1 tablespoon lemon peel, grated
salt and pepper
1/4 cup water
Rosemary sprigs

Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Trim excess fat off lamb and place, fat side up, in large roasting pan. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Mix oil, minced rosemary, lemon peel and garlic in bowl. Rub over lamb.

Roast lamb until thermometer inserted into thickest part registers 145 degrees F for medium-rare, 155-160 degrees for medium, and 165-170 for well done, about 1 to 1 ½ hours. (Do not allow thermometer to touch the bone.) Baste occasionally with pan juices. Transfer to platter. Tent with foil; let stand for 15 minutes.

Spoon off fat from drippings in roasting pan. Add 1/4 cup water to pan. Place on burner over medium heat. Add any lamb juices from platter. Bring to a boil, scraping up browned bits on bottom of pan. Season with salt and pepper. Keep warm.

Cut lamb into thin slices; arrange on platter. Pour pan juices over. Garnish with rosemary sprigs.

Serves 8.

I'm worn out. I can not plant another clove

FALL PLANTINGS TIPS
We make a valiant effort to answer all your email questions on garlic growing and lore. But some questions arrive so many times each year, we thought we would make a preemptive strike and answer some of the queries we receive at planting time:

“When Shall I Plant?”
Garlic is not very sensitive to planting date, but early September in the extreme north to December in the Deep South and West Coast work well. Many people like to plant on Columbus Day or under the October full moon (not sure why, maybe a vampire thing?) And yes, you can plant in spring after the ground has thawed, but fall planting is better. You can order now to be sure you get your favorite bulbs and then keep them in their bag or container until planting day. Do not break up the bulbs into cloves until you are ready to hit the garden.

“How Far Apart and How Deep Do I Plant the Cloves?"
Garlic does not like to be crowded (thus the importance of weeding.) For softnecks and hardnecks, we recommend 4 to 6 inches apart with the tip being about 3 inches deep. Plant with the “scab” or basal plate of the clove on the bottom. Elephants should be around 6 to 8 inches apart with the tip about 3-4 inches below the surface.

“Do I Need to Mulch?”
It is better to mulch than not, if only for weed control next spring and summer. In cold areas without snow, mulch really helps prevent frost heaving and wild temperature swings, which can confuse the cloves. Mulch with straw, hay, grass clippings, chopped leaves or even alfalfa (before it went to seed) up to 6 inches deep. Don’t worry; the shoots will come through in the spring. Do not mulch with pine needles or fresh wood chips, as they can often outgas chemicals which are not good for garlic.

“What About Water and Fertilizer?”
Plant in rich loamy soil, with well-aged manure or other balanced fertilizers mixed in. Some find a pinch of bone meal with the clove helps increase size. The cloves start growing immediately and continue to grow slowly during the winter. Don’t worry if the shoots emerge in fall, as winter cold will not harm them. But don’t let the soil dry out during the fall and winter, or you may lose your plants.

“Where Does Your Garlic Come From?”
The U.S. of A. All of it. No Chinese imports. Our garlics are all certified organic and TheGarlicStore.com is a Certified Organic Processor/Handler by the Colorado Department of Agriculture. Our garlic has been lovingly grown by family farmers across the nation, and your purchases help support small farm organic and sustainable agriculture.

COMPETITIVE GARLIC GROWING

There are leagues for all sorts of sports these days: Lacrosse, beach volleyball, frisbee throwing, golf, polo, and even competitive eating. But gardeners have long competed for the biggest, juiciest, tastiest of almost every imaginable crop. The field of combat? The many County and State Fairs that mark the climax of summer in so many parts of the nation. And we are happy to report that one our customers, Don Francois of Des Moines, IA brought home a Big Blue Ribbon from the Iowa State Fair for his Siberian purple striped hardnecks, grown with planting stock from TheGarlicStore.com. Way to Grow, Don and Congratulations!

And if your bulbs take home a ribbon, snap us a picture and send it to the Chief Clove and you’ll have bragging rights to thousands of our readers.

LIFE WITH COMPUTERS
TheGarlicStore.com was founded 11 years ago as an entirely online operation, since the farm was well east of East Nowhere, and doing standard retail was out of the question. So along came this newfangled Internet thing, and we thought we would give it try. We were pioneers, as it turns out, being the very first member of the Rocky Mountain Better Business Bureau BBB On Line Reliability Program. We survived the dot.com debacle (maybe we were a dot.bulb?) with nary a scratch as people needed garlic no matter what their portfolio was doing. Today online orders stream in from all 50 states (yes, we have growers in Alaska!) and around the world. We have tried to keep our site simple and easy to use. The graphics aren’t too fancy (read: no long download times) and we don’t mess with the layout too much as we want our many, many return customers not to have to relearn the site every year when they order. We have maximum security for your online purchases, and strive to keep ahead of the curve when it comes to outwitting Internet hooligans. (We NEVER share your information with third parties. Never.) We try to make sure our site works with most browsers and operating systems (though weird things will happen from time to time). The biggest hassle in recent years is phishing and spam. As with even the largest companies, it is easy for someone to send an email claiming to be from TheGarlicStore.com while trying to weasel some private information out of you. We don’t send emails except for (1) this newsletter (which you can opt in or out of from the home page), (2) the automated reply to an online order, or (3) a direct question about a specific order. If you have any questions concerning an email supposedly from us, just call 1-800-854-7219 and we’ll set things straight. The biggest problem now is spam filters that try to weed out the 80-90% of net traffic that is garbage. The many filters out there work in differing ways, so predicting what will be blocked is tough. Order acknowledgment and this newsletter are sometimes sent to the electronic dump. The solution: most spam filters allow you to accept email traffic from specific addresses, so you may wish to set things up to receive from: TheChiefClove@TheGarlicStore.com. But even with that, never open an attachment in any email when you are not sure where it comes from. TheGarlicStore.com does not send attachments except in the rare case of sending a copy of your order form upon your direct request.

And we always try to keep ahead of the MAC and PC worlds’ new technology. In its attempt to keep pace with Apple’s great operating system, Microsoft is secretly working on a new OS, which will have some really cool features. See the sneak peak in the figure!

QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS
You can always email TheGarlicStore.com with your garlic questions (TheChiefClove@TheGarlicStore.com.) But if you would like your question answered in an upcoming issue of The Garlic Store Gazette, just let us know. We can publish your favorite garlic pictures too (just send them as an email attachment).

Published by: www.TheGarlicStore.com at Mail Creek Lane, Fort Collins, CO 80525. A member of the Better Business Bureau Online. Email us at: TheChiefClove@TheGarlicStore.com or call us at 1-800-854-7219 (Mon-Fri, 10 AM - 6 PM Denver Time)
© The Garlic Store/FMA, Inc., 2007

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 for growing your own top flight garlic, and also provides some historical facts about the history of garlic, along with fun scenes from the Gilroy Garlic Festival. Available now on DVD.

Order online at www.TheGarlicStore.com