This is from the Angelica Organic Farm site "The bright white flawless looking Chinese garlic is bleached with chlorine. Most concerning is that Chinese garlic is still being grown using chemicals banned in Australia long ago and it is reported that raw human sewage has be used as fertiliser. To be able to allow it into our country, the quarantine department, AQIS, fumigates every single bulb with methyl bromide, one of the world's most dangerous chemicals for human and environmental health. It is kept in cold storage and is often too old by the time it reaches our shelves, which is why it’s sprouting or spongy when you get it."
I have been worried about the Chinese garlic sold in Australia for a few years now. The garlic we see on sale is pure white and very unnatural looking. I'm not sure how Chinese garlic is grown, processed and fumigated, but one look tells me I don't want to eat it. And yet Australian garlic is so expensive now. In my local IGA this week, Chinese garlic was $10 a kilo, Australian garlic was $49.95 a kilo. Who can afford to buy it at that price! Garlic in the USA is between $12 and $13 a pound, that's about half the price of our locally grown garlic. Mind you, most of us usually buy it in small amounts so generally, we don't realise how expensive it is because we only buy one or two.
Just out of the ground, our garlic sat drying out for a few days (above), then I cleaned them up a bit, (below).
Garlic is slow growing but if you grow it in the backyard, in the soil or a container, it's quite an easy crop. We buy organic garlic cloves early in the year and put them in the fruit drawer of the fridge to fool it into thinking it's winter. After about four weeks, we plant it out. This is one of those once-a-year crops, if you get it right, and store it well, you'll have enough for the whole year. I'm not buying garlic again - Australian garlic is too expensive and Chinese garlic is too scary.
We harvested our garlic last week when the tops started going brown but still had some green in them. The bulbs were big, there were plenty of cloves on each of them and they had a lovely purple papery skin. We had one fresh straight away that night, roasted in the oven with some lamb. Delicious! The rest of them are now hanging outside on the back verandah drying out. I tried to braid them and while it looked good and tight when it was laying flat on the table, now that it's been hanging for a week, it's loosening and looking a bit untidy. Still, the main point is that we have good garlic, grown in our backyard - thrifty and local.
As you as concerned about garlic as I am? Where do you get yours from? Of course it's not earth shattering, we don't have to have garlic, but it is good for our health and good garlic tastes divine and makes other food really shine. I'd like to see all of us growing our own so I've searched for the information below to help us all do that. I wonder if you will.
As you as concerned about garlic as I am? Where do you get yours from? Of course it's not earth shattering, we don't have to have garlic, but it is good for our health and good garlic tastes divine and makes other food really shine. I'd like to see all of us growing our own so I've searched for the information below to help us all do that. I wonder if you will.
