If you've always bought your "fresh" garlic from the grocery store, you're in for a huge treat! Fresh from the garden garlic is a whole different animal, with richer, more intense taste, so you can use less and still ramp up the flavor in your family's most loved dishes.

Garlic is divided into two broad categories: hardneck and softneck. The hardnecks, allium ophioscorodon, are the older types originating in central Asia where cold winters and damp springs are common, and this group typically prefers those conditions. Hardneck garlics produce stiff stalks with decorative curls at the top. These curls produce seed heads and are responsible for the common name of "serpent garlic". The flower/seed heads also consume energy that you want to go into underground bulb formation so it's advisable to snip them off when they begin to curl. Hardneck varieties have thin, easy to peel skins and because of these papery skins they don't tend to keep as long as softnecks. Favored by home gardeners who plan to consume their harvests by mid to late fall, hardneck garlics are the type most often grown non-commercially.

Softneck garlics, allium sativum var. sativum, have been developed more recently, often by crossing older strains, and are popular because they keep very well and can be planted mechanically, a trait that's important to market growers. Softneck garlic develop flexible stems which make them ideal for fashioning into decorative braids like the type you've seen in old world Italian delis. These garlics are also great keepers so if you chose to grow larger quantities, softnecks will allow you to enjoy homegrown well into late winter or even early spring.

Click here for a a few garlic tips, particularly helpful for first timers!