Photo credit: AP/Kathy Willen

In my column today in The Baltimore Sun, I am urging gardeners to consider planting a handful of garlic bulbs when they are planting their daffodil and tulip bulbs. It is the perfect time of year!

Garlic planted between now and about Thanksgiving will grow roots now and put up shoots in the spring and be ready for harvest in July.

There are two kinds of garlic, soft neck and hard neck, and it refers to the stem that comes up through the middle of the clove.

Almost all supermarket garlic is a softneck variety. This is because softneck garlic is easier to grow and plant mechanically and also keeps longer than hardneck garlic. Softnecks have white papery skin and lots of cloves, often forming several layers around the central core. The flexible stalk also allows softneck garlic to be formed into garlic braids.

Hardneck garlics have a "scape" - stalk - which coils from the top. On the top of this scape grow a number of what are often called garlic flowers. Hardneck garlics have fewer, larger cloves than the softnecks. They also have less of an outer bulb wrapper, sometimes none at all. This makes them more sensitive and reduces their shelf life.

And, of course, there is elephant garlic, the source of much confusion. People buy elephant garlic because of its size. They also assume that it must be more strongly flavoured than ordinary garlic. In fact the opposite is true.

In terms of flavor, elephant garlic is to garlic what leeks are to onions. It is much less intense and sweeter.