I'm 30 miles from the "Garlic capital of the world" and garlic from China is cheaper.

M

mariadnoca

Moderator
When the wind is just right you can even smell the garlic fields from here. This saddens me. Plus, it makes it harder to find a local garlic when stores stock the lower priced item, which just isn't right.

 
And the local garlic will be fresher. Have you tried growing garlic? Very easy. . .

I am doing this for the third year, using some purchased seed garlic and some garlic from last year's harvest. Good stuff.

I think the chinese dump the garlic at crazy-cheap prices. . .

 
Personally, I would not buy any food from China if I knew it came from there. Given what happened

several years ago with pet and baby food, there is no way I would buy from them. China does weird things with their left overs from anything. You find terrible things in pet toys from China, everything from metal in the stuffing to other unidentifiable materials and metals. I shop at a pet store for my Havanese which does not carry anything from China and certainly not food.

 
I buy Christopher Ranch garlic and grew it twice. So easy. Just take the cloves and plop them

into the ground or even a pot. Up they come. It takes many months for them to develop, much like onions, so you have to work on that and maybe do two or three plantings a year. It was fun to do, and they were delicious. In summer, I buy from the Farmer's Market. The garlic is so fresh, sticky, and delicious. I have not taken the time to explore how to grow them all year long.

 
Off-topic but related to the Garlic Capital area - we spent the night in Gilroy while looking

at colleges this summer - boy is that such a permeating smell!

I am a huge garlic lover, but I was on sensory overload there, so much so that I lost all my enthusiasm for trying most of the specialty garlic foods available locally. My niece convinced me to split some garlic fries with her, but everything else went out the window.

 
That's one of the ranches nearby. I do try to only buy local, but sometimes going to 3 stores just

For garlic is a pain. I really don't want garlic from China. It's just awfully sad that with shipping and everything it's cheaper than the stuff grown down the street.

 
It doesn't smell like that all year long. Mostly when they're bottling up the crop.

crop. Growing up one of my parents friends lived in Gilroy and we would go there all the time to their cherry orchard. I never once smelled the garlic when I was at their house. It's only like one maybe two times a year you smell it. Or if you're driving right past McCormick or someplace.

They have a garlic festival there every year and I've never been because it's always the hottest weekend of the year, and it's 10 to 15° hotter there than my house so no way. Not with all the crazy traffic of insane people going there in 105+ degrees heat. No way. I can get the recipes online later, LOL.

 
I'm doing seriously less tomatoes than my insanity of last year. 2 days ago I saw a ripe tomato!

But I wasn't gonna climb all over what it would take for me to get out there and get it so I sacrificed it to the monsoon storm we had yesterday.

 
That is very interesting about the smell, and good to know. We were there in August, so

that must be a "prep" time for the crops.

I agree with you about avoiding during the Festival - it is a cute place, but must be a mad house during that time.

 
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