Stan Goodman wrote:
On Sun, 6 May 2007 01:08:21 UTC, Steve Calvin
opined:

I wouldn't plant anything from the stores personally. Most
often they have softneck, which if you we don't care for.
But that's just us.

Elephant "garlic", it not garlic. It's a member of the lily
family. While people use it as garlic, it isn't.

I'm confused, am I reading you correctly?. It (Alium Ampeloprasum)
isn't a garlic (Alium) because it is a member of the lily family?
Would you like to expand on that?

I meant to say the leek family *not* lily....

but to answer your question.... you really should learn to
use a search engine if you're going to "play" on the
internet and usenet realms...

Russian garlic (Allium ampeloprasum var. ampeloprasum) is
not a true garlic, but actually a variant of the species to
which the garden leek belongs. It has a tall, solid,
flowering stalk and broad, flat leaves much like those of
the leek, but forms a bulb consisting of very large,
garlic-like cloves. The flavor of these, while not exactly
like garlic, is much more similar to garlic than to leeks.
The flavor is milder than garlic, and much more palatable to
some people than garlic when used raw as in salads.

The mature bulb is broken up into cloves which are quite
large and with papery skins and these are used for both
culinary purposes and propagation. There are also much
smaller cloves with a hard shell that occur on the outside
of the bulb. These are often ignored, but if they are
planted, they will the first year produce a non-flowering
plant which has a solid bulb, essentially a single large
clove. In their second year, this single clove will break up
into many separate cloves. Elephant garlic is not generally
propagated by seeds.

Some people use the young unopened flowering heads as a
vegetable.

The plant, if left alone, will spread into a clump with many
flowering heads. These are often left in flower gardens as
an ornamental and to discourage pests.

--
Steve
http://adirondackoutdoors.forumcircle.com