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[Clansgian AT wmconnect.com]

>  about four pounds of the Chinese garlic from Sam’s  
> Club in Phoenix. Should be good if Monsanto hasn't touched it.

Apparently Monsanto hasn't.  I use the same garlic (from Mart instead of 
Sam's) for "seed" and have so for a good number of years.  I've planted seven 
pounds of the cloves so far this year, some of it 8" high right now.  I'm 
convinced it's never too cold to successfully plant garlic.  Also where I 
failed to 
harvest this or that bulb last year, it is now a cluster of slips and I 
separate 
those and plant them as well.  The results are similar.

Whatever type that Chinese garlic is (softneck and very white), it's a very 
good type for the garden.  Here it has risen to $2.88 a pound but that's 
still 
a steal compared to "seed" garlic prices from the seedsmen.

Also when in a Mart or grocery store of 'tienda', look for Mexican garlilc 
(called 'ajo').  Most of the time it's a purply hardneck type and makes 
excellent green garlic.

Watch for the telltale signs that the garlic plant is switching from leaf 
growth to bulb growth, generally when the leaves go from straight to arching 
over.  Until the bulb growth starts in earnest, the whole plant is good to 
eat.  
After that the leaves begin to get tough.  I plant more cheapie garlic cloves 
once a month to keep a continual supply of green garlic. 

Of course, there's more garlic than can be eaten fresh, so much of it is 
coarsely chopped and dehydrated.  If it matures beyond the fresh stage, it's 
dehydrated any way and then run through a coffee grinder to make it into a 
powder,  
Any that escapes one of these treatments (and that's half the garlic) is left 
to form bulbs.  Some of those bulbs escape and form clusters of slips the 
next spring and the whole garlic wheel starts again.   </HTML>