Gardener turns over a new bulb as weather warms and thumb turns green early

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Feverish aptly describes my activities over the past few weeks.

Call it spring fever if you will. All I know is that I have been in a planting frenzy, something that usually strikes me hard in mid-May.

And doesn’t it feel good.

The initial twinge hit the first week of March when I saw my first crocus and snowdrops in bloom. That glorious sight nearly made me lightheaded. And it left me with an itchy green thumb.

Stoically I waited to start seeds. I knew from past attempts that I had to hold off through March, if only for the plants’ sake. But now there are 60 peat pots toasting their feet in the miniature greenhouses I bought earlier this year. I’ve got tomatoes, husk cherries, melons, pumpkins, peppers and luffa gourds started. I have dianthus, coneflower, Shasta daisy, perennial sweet peas and sedum.

Among all those are also a dozen pots of asparagus. I thought I’d take the hard route and wait three years instead of two for my first asparagus crop. And starting my own seed will give me time to get the bed dug and built up. But that will be a story for another day.

My first greenhouse visit was a week ago. It was a reserved jaunt as I basked in the humid glow of filtered sun. I picked up some pansies, lavender, dianthus and two tiny clematis vines. With the threat of snow looming, I tucked them into a whiskey barrel and covered them with a greenhouse umbrella that has seen better days but can still protect as the plants harden off.

I wasn’t in any rush to get my hands in the dirt because I’d already done that. One of the raised beds up by the apple trees had beckoned to me just days before. It was a damp day, and as the mists drifted over the back lawn that evening I decided I had to plant something.

So in went four kinds of lettuce, two kinds of spinach, along with a row each of broccoli raab, beets, chard and kale.

Nothing could have been easier because I’d already prepared the bed when I planted a few dozen cloves of garlic the weekend before.

April 13 and I was outside planting garlic, of all things. I also killed two mosquitoes but I refuse to linger on that.

Every fall I think about planting garlic and every year I don’t. So I can’t imagine what possessed me to order nine bulbs from Veseys Seeds. I think it might have been the line that it could be planted in spring.

The catalogs I’ve ordered from only ever offered garlic in the fall. That’s the time to plant it, they said. So I tried it and never got anything.

So I gave up.

Then I see the Veseys claim.

And I really wanted to try again because I love garlic.

Garlic, or Allium sativum, actually is a member of the lily family and a close onion relative. It is the most pungent allium and considered the most therapeutic. Modern research has linked it to having significant benefits for the heart, but over the centuries it has been used for much more: colds, influenza, asthma, consumption, dysentery, bronchitis, whooping cough, gastroenteritis, rheumatism, acne and fungal infections, to name just a few. During World War I, the Russian army used garlic to treat wounds. It was even reported in 1722 that it warded off the plague when mixed with vinegar.

But garlic was well-employed many centuries before that. Since it has been cultivated for so long (one estimate was 7,000 years, another 10,000), its origins are unclear, although signs point to somewhere in south Siberia. This ancient herb’s presence was recorded circa 3,000 B.C. – Babylonian times. It was found scattered in King Tutankhamun’s tomb and was a favorite plant of not only the Egyptians, but also the Romans and Greeks.

With that much history, garlic lore abounds and not just about its medicinal properties.

Muslim legend states that when Satan departed from the Garden of Eden after the fall of man, garlic sprang up from his left footstep, onion his right. Superstition says garlic will ward off vampires, will cause moles to run for their lives, and – if chewed – will keep the chewer ahead of competitors in a race.

Writers had a lot to say about garlic: Horace wrote that it was “more poisonous than hemlock” (not surprising when he wrote that it made him ill), while Homer made a point of showing a garlic-eating Ulysses escaping from Circe’s wrath when she turned all but our hero into pigs. Pliny sang garlic’s praises as he recounted all the contagions it cured, 61 by one count.

But let me be honest. None of this influenced me in wanting to grow garlic. I simply like it.

So to appease my curiosity, I looked garlic up and discovered all of this history.

I also found that there are two types of garlic: softneck and hardneck. Softnecks are easier to grow (and what I think I planted), braids well and stores well. Hardnecks are harder to grow, don’t braid well and don’t store well.

Explains a lot about their names, huh?

Hardnecks also are considered worth the bother because the flavor is richer.

As for varieties, there seem to be quite a few. Veseys offers a generic variety for spring and one for fall. Another company from which I’ve ordered before has pages of garlic varieties. Irish Eyes With a Hint of Garlic has lots of cultivation information, along with an impressive array of garlic: seven different groups with several choices per group. Decisions, decisions.

You also could just try planting some sprouting cloves you’ve got in the fridge if you want.

I checked on my plot earlier this week and already a few sprouts are sticking above the soil. I couldn’t help but grin.

You know, I think I’ve discovered yet another condition that garlic can treat – spring fever.

We’ll have to wait until harvest time in August to see if it has any effect on the dog days of summer.

Sources for bulbs

Veseys Seeds, P.O. Box 9000, Calais 04619; telephone, 1-800-363-7333; Web site, www.veseys.com.

Irish Eyes-Garden City Seeds, P.O. Box 307, Thorp, Wash. 98946; telephone, 509-964-7000; Web site, www.irish-eyes.com.

Janine Pineo is a NEWS systems editor. Her e-mail address is jpineo@bangordailynews.net.