The Garlic Farmer Colin Boswell visits the Dead Sea Garlic in Israel. This is the lowest garlic on Earth, at over 400 meters below sea level, The garlic fields are by the Dead Sea, and in sight of the caves where the Dead Sea Scrolls were hidden over two thousands years ago, only to be rediscovered by a Bedouin Shepherd in 1947. In some of the scriptures from the Dead Sea Scrolls there are recipes for grinding garlic and adding olive oil. Did Mary Berry in a previous incarnation become the token woman in the Essene sect, hidden away in this desert, and keeping the scribes high on garlic?

As a garlic grower, I might have said that garlic would never grow in a soil which tastes of salt, with salt crystals evident on the surface. However this was an exceptional crop of garlic, see photos of the Arab harvest workers with garlic any producer would be proud of. Harvested the end of March, this is the earliest garlic in the Northern Hemisphere. I peeled and tasted a clove in the field, delivering a fierce heat which one did not really need given a temperature of 30C.