After tasting homegrown garlic for the first time, I came up with a theory. I think famous chefs have access to really great garlic, which is why the rest of us have to use double, triple or quadruple the number of supermarket-bought cloves to get the flavour we’re after. With a punchier smell, juicier texture and a taste that hits the tongue with a kick, homegrown garlic is many orders of magnitude more delicious than the bulbs most of us can get hold of.
Garlic is an easy crop to grow, though it takes a while to transform from a clove (you grow next year’s garlic bulbs from this year’s cloves) into a bulb, and now is a great time to get them planted. There are two main types of garlic: soft neck produces small cloves, will keep for many months and, as the name suggests, is the kind of garlic that can be plaited together; hardneck is hardier, so good for cold areas. They produce cloves that are larger and more flavourful, but don’t keep as long.
