Canning and Planting Garlic

Last week Maid Elizabeth brought home a grocery bag full of garlic that was a gift from a local gentleman.  Since we don’t have a root cellar, I immediately made plans to can this wonderful bounty, foreseeing tidy rows of minced garlic in my future. 

This morning, as I began separating the cloves, preparing for a full day of canning, an idea happened upon me – why didn’t I plant some of these cloves so that we could enjoy our own homegrown garlic?

Seizing upon the idea, Miss Serenity, Maid Elizabeth and I quickly went to work.  First, we had to prepare garden beds.  Our soil is so lacking that we have to heavily amend it, so we trudged out to the compost pile and shoveled rich, black soil into the  wheel barrow.  After we dug compost into two separate raised beds, we were ready to plant. 

Garlic needs to be planted about two inches deep and four inches between cloves.  With three of us working, we had the raised beds planted in short order.  After a quick watering, we covered the newly planted garlic with mulch to keep it protected over the winter.

After planting the beds we were off to the kitchen for the real work.  We peeled garlic cloves one by one and soon had a bowl full of shiny, white garlic.  After washing the cloves, we pulsed them quickly in the blender (a few at a time) and put them in a pot.  After all the garlic was minced, we poured boiling water over the garlic (to quickly parboil it) and let it sit while we prepared the jars for canning.  We filled 1/2 pint jars with garlic and filled with the garlic liquid (that was poured over the garlic) to fill the jar to within 1/2 inch from the top (1/2 inch head space).  We put 1/2 tsp. of pickling salt in each jar (pickling salt doesn’t have iodine in it, so it doesn’t discolor the garlic while canning).  Putting Tatler lids on the jars, we put them into the pressure canner.

We canned the garlic at 10 pounds of pressure for 45 minutes (same time and pressure as onions).  After processing, we pulled 6 beautiful 1/2 pint jars of minced garlic out of the canner. 

Oh, how we’ll enjoy this garlic throughout the year until we harvest our own flavorful garlic crop!

Until next time,

Enola