Ly Son Garlic

On Lý Sơn island, sand holds water for the garlic.

Anyone who has built a sandcastle on a beach remembers this. A freshly built castle is still dark with water. After a little while in the sun, the sand turns pale, then crumbles away in chunks at a touch. However much water is poured onto sand, just as much slips straight through.

Lý Sơn is a small island out at sea, covering about 10 square kilometers. It was born from volcanoes, together with sand and sea coral that built up over a great many years. Most of the ground on the island has turned to stone, dry and hard. The layer of soft soil on top is very thin. The whole island does not have a single rice field.

On that hard ground, garlic growers build their fields one layer at a time. In the last months of the year, as the new garlic season is about to begin, they go out and level the field until it is perfectly flat. The bottom layer they spread is red basalt soil, the soil of a volcanic island. Every two or three years, they replace that red soil.

On top of the red soil, they scatter a thin layer of well-rotted compost. The outermost layer is sand.

That sand comes from the sea around the island, a white coral sand. Up close, it is mixed with bits of broken clam shells and sea snail shells. The growers spread it in a thin layer, about 2 or 3 centimeters deep, covering the whole field. In some places, people add one more layer of white sand, very fine and loose. After one or two crops, they rake away the old sand and spread a fresh layer.

The white of the sand reflects some of the sunlight, helping the red soil beneath keep its moisture. The sand is loose too, so the garlic bulbs underground have room to grow. Without the sand, the red soil quickly loses its water, and the garlic plants wilt and never grow.

On the beach, sand dries right at the surface. On a garlic field, that same dry surface becomes a white blanket, laid over the red soil so it will not go thirsty.

People on the island believe the coral sand gives the garlic its sweet fragrance. That layer of coral sand was once likened to the soul of the garlic plant.

Yet sand along the island's shores grows scarcer each season. In the past, there were barges that pumped sand up from the sea for the garlic growers. Now no one is allowed to pump sand that way. People on the island are looking for ways to make their garlic fields depend less on sea sand, by adding more organic fertilizer.

With the field ready, it is time to plant. Many families on the island have kept back part of the previous crop, waiting for this very day. They carry the seed garlic out to the field and plant it in the freshly sanded ground.

Each year, a field on the island grows garlic for just one crop. After the garlic, it is the onions' turn, for two or three more crops. People here never let the land rest.

Then the weeks of watering begin, to keep the garlic from drying out. But fresh water on the island is scarce. The island has more than 2,000 wells, some dug and some drilled. Yet in the dry season the groundwater sinks lower, and in some places the well water turns salty. One garlic grower says there is a big well that has never run dry.

On Đảo Bé, the small island of Lý Sơn, the garlic fields grow just one crop a year, depending entirely on the rain.

Watering garlic used to be much harder work. Another grower still remembers dragging the water hose from one end of the field all the way to the other. An extra person had to stand by to hold the hose up. For a time, the fields relied only on rain, or on well water pumped through plastic pipes.

Now some fields have sprinklers. The grower only has to turn the nozzle, and water spreads out over the field.

Week after week, the water sinks down through the white sand, and the garlic plants slowly grow.

About two months after planting, the island already has young garlic. Some plots are planted just for young garlic, the plants set close together. In the past, people only used the plants thinned out from fields grown for bulbs.

In young garlic, the base has not yet split into cloves, so it tastes sweet. The cook cuts off the tops, keeps the base and splits it. Then the garlic is blanched in a pot of boiling water. After that, some families make it into a salad with seafood, and others stir-fry it with meat.

Around February and March, the garlic fields reach pulling season. The pickers go out early in the morning and work until evening. They put the garlic into sacks, carry it home and spread it out to dry quickly. Many families again set part of it aside, waiting for the next planting season. Some also dry a portion to sell later.

Lý Sơn garlic bulbs are small, each weighing only about 8 grams on average. Under the chalk-white skin, the clove inside is ivory white, with a faint tinge of green. Its scent is gentle and does not sting the nose. It is hardly hot at all, and in the end a little sweetness lingers on the tip of the tongue.

In 2020, that small bulb received a certificate of geographical indication. It was meant to keep the name Lý Sơn garlic for garlic grown on the island alone.

An ordinary bulb splits into six or seven cloves lying snug together. But in a pile of freshly pulled garlic, now and then there is a bulb with just one clove. It sits alone inside its white skin, no bigger than a fingertip. People on the island call it tỏi cô đơn, lonely garlic, and sometimes simply tỏi một, single garlic.

Lonely garlic is not a separate variety. It forms on its own on ordinary garlic plants, growing in the same field. Lonely garlic makes up only about one part in every 100 of the harvest. It is rare, prized by people on the island, and it costs far more than ordinary garlic.

Yet that precious garlic comes from stunted, weak plants. In years when the soil is poor, the crop fails, pests and disease spread, or the weather turns harsh, the pickers find more lonely garlic.

Some people have tried to make a garlic plant produce a single clove bulb, but without success. Older people on the island say the garlic plant has a soul and feelings too. Only when it wants to does it become lonely garlic.

This season, the fields have had a good harvest. The pickers go from row to row and only rarely come across a lonely garlic. Meanwhile the sacks of ordinary garlic keep filling up. For garlic growers, a good harvest like this makes a happy garlic season.

One picker pulls another plant from the row and gently shakes its roots. The white sand clinging to the roots falls away, back onto the field.