While growing garlic can take several months, garlic greens are a quick, easy way to grow that fresh garlic taste you love year-round!

Planting garlic is typically done in the fall, so you can harvest the plump cloves in the summer once the cloves get plump. But if you don’t have a lot of garden space – or simply don’t want to wait that long – garlic greens are super easy to grow in pots indoors, and will provide you with fresh garlic-flavored seasoning for your cooking all winter long. They don’t taste exactly like garlic cloves (kind of like how scallions don’t taste exactly like onions), but they have a fresh, garlicky taste that will add some zest to your winter dishes.

Check out the article below for some tips on growing your own tasty garlic greens indoors:

Small cloves are fussy to peel but are perfect for planting, as no peeling is required…. But don’t use the leftover garlic in your cabinet that’s dried up; it’s dead and only good for your next batch of soup stock.

Plant Your Cloves

To grow tasty garlic plants, all you need is a four-inch pot (or a quart yogurt container with some drain holes poked in the bottom), a small bag of organic potting soil, and a saucer or tray to set the pot on to catch drips.

Fill the pot with soil within ½ inch of the top, gently break the garlic bulbs into individual cloves…, and push each individual segment, pointy end up, about an inch deep into the soil, planting perhaps 12 cloves close together. Place the pot on the saucer, water well, and put in a sunny spot. Water as needed to keep the soil evenly moist but not soggy.

Harvest Your Greens

In a week or so, the first green noses will start poking out of your garlic plants. Once the greens are 8 to 10 inches tall…, clip off what you need with scissors, and use in any recipe that calls for garlic or scallions. You will get several cuttings before the cloves stop putting up more sprouts. At that point you can empty the pot into the compost, refill with fresh potting soil, and plant it up with new cloves.
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Use ‘Em Up

Try minced garlic greens (raw or sautéed) with mashed or baked potatoes instead of chives, chop the meaty bases into stir-fry instead of scallions, or try this delicious pesto recipe:

Garlic Green Pesto

1 cup of garlic greens, chopped (or mix half garlic greens with half parsley or spinach for a milder pesto)
¼ cup hard cheese, grated (Parmesan or other hard cheese)
¼ cup nuts (pine nuts or walnuts)
¼ cup olive oil
Salt to taste

Grind ingredients together in a mini food processor or with a mortar and pestle until you get the texture you prefer. This pesto sauce is yummy tossed with hot whole-grain pasta, or spread on rounds of a good chewy sourdough and toasted under the broiler until hot.

Read the full article at Rodale’s Organic Life…