Subject: the history og garlic?

From: [email-masked] (Arto Wikla)
Date: 17 May 1993 12:22:27 +0300

What is the history of garlic? 
The first writings about garlic?
Does it originate from Europe, Africa, Asia, New World?

Arto Wikla, Helsinki, Finland

---

From: [email-masked] (Dave Platt)
Date: Mon, 17 May 1993 18:51:30 GMT

>What is the history of garlic? 

One somewhat-amusing note w.r.t garlic.  A few years ago, while visiting
my grandmother, I chanced across a book on one of her bookshelves which
was written in 1890 or so.  This book concerned "market gardening" in
the New York City region of the U.S.  It was a practical handbook on
market gardening, written at the time when steam-heated greenhouses were
first coming into commercial use (thus permitting a year-round supply of
fresh vegetables to consumers in the snow belt).

The last half of the book was filled with descriptions of the
commercially important vegetables of the day.  The author listed the
specific varieties he know of, with strengths and weaknesses of each
cultivar being given.  There were about five pages of listings for
onions, ten pages for tomatoes, many pages of lettuces, and so forth.

Garlic got about two column-inches on one page.  Summary:  "Eaten mostly
by foreigners" (by which I suspect he meant "immigrants").  "Of little
commercial importance."  No specific varieties listed at all.

Man, I'm glad things have changed since then!  Life without lots of
garlic is, shall we say, uninteresting.
-- 
Dave Platt                                                VOICE: (415) 813-8917
              Domain: [email-masked]      UUCP: ...netcomsv!ntg!dplatt
 USNAIL: New Technologies Group Inc. 2470 Embarcardero Way, Palo Alto CA 94303