We’ve got both Hard-neck and Soft-neck varieties! Get your garlic ‘seed’ bulbs NOW for planting from mid-October to mid-November!
SOFT-NECK Varieties:
If you’d like to be eating your own home-grown organic garlic for 9 months (or more!) after harvesting, you should be growing some of our excellent Soft-Neck varieties. All of them are very flavorful without being excessively hot, they are cold-hardy and easy to grow here, and produce large, easy-to-peel outer cloves.
They are excellent for raw sauces like tzatziki, hummus and pesto, and impart a somewhat gentler garlic flavor to all cooked dishes. I have roasted the bulbs as well. When consuming garlic as medicine, you will probably find soft-neck varieties easier to eat in quantity. And these are the type to grow for making beautiful, giftable garlic braids!
Nootka Rose:
Nootka Rose is a beautifully colored ‘Silver-Skin’ garlic created at Nootka Rose Farm on the San Juan Islands in Puget Sound, WA and is considered an heirloom variety. Known for its rich, warm, bold flavor and exceptional aroma, it excels as a cooking garlic. Thick, creamy white wrappers cover beautiful, red-streaked clove skins that are easy to peel, and the large bulbs tend to yield anywhere from 15-24 cloves each. Nootka Rose is very long-storing, from 9 to 12 months, is ideal for braiding, and grows well in all parts of the country except those with the warmest winters.
Nootka Rose is usually the last garlic to mature and be harvested and is often, if not usually, the longest storing garlic of all. Because it is a long storing variety, you might want to grow some and save them for the time when your other varieties have already sprouted and are no longer in an ideal eating condition.
Silver Rose: This is a soft-neck silverskin variety. Rose-colored cloves in very smooth bright-white bulbs. Beautiful garlic to braid! This is a longest-storing garlic. Like all fast-growing Silverskin garlic, this type is frequently planted in the spring. Very popular in Western and Southern US and in France and Italy. There are 12-15 cloves per head.
HARD-NECK Varieties:
If you love to roast garlic bulbs, if you appreciate the hotter, stronger and more differentiated flavors of garlic, or live at higher altitudes in the mountains, you’ll want to grow several different hardneck varieties. They are quite cold-hardy, and when well fed, can produce large bulbs with large cloves. You won’t be able to braid these, but you can cut off the tender young curly ‘scapes’ that appear in early summer and use them for ‘green garlic’ dips, pickles, etc.
Musik: Sold out!
Chesnok Red:
Regularly wins acclaim and awards as one of the best tasting baking/roasting garlics!
Collected in 1985 in the Rep. of Georgia, this highly productive, easy-to-grow ‘Purple-Striped’ garlic makes beautiful, large deep-purple bulbs. Eaten raw, its intense heat quickly dissipates, but cooking and baking truly bring out its earthy, rich garlic complexities, very aromatic with a rich, smooth sweetness and just a touch of heat.
The cloves are more numerous (~8-20) and elongated than most hard-neck types and are initially hard to peel, allowing Chesnok Red to store much longer than other hard-necks – up to a year! But cloves become easier to peel the longer they store. Like other hard-neck varieties, it also produces curling, edible ‘scapes’ in June. Garlic is a heavy feeder, so feed your soil well!
Plants are vigorous and upright, can handle a little neglect, an are great multipliers, growing large bulbs from even medium-sized cloves.
Spanish Roja:
This vigorous, easy-to-grow heirloom variety arrived in the US over 100 years ago. It is famous for its classic rich, complex ‘true garlic’ flavor and is one of the most popular with restaurants/chefs. The large, purple streaked bulbs often reach three inches in diameter and typically have seven to twelve large tan cloves. Spanish Roja peels easily and keeps for up to 4-6 months when properly stored (the outer bulb wrappers are thin and flake off easily so be careful to keep them intact to prolong storage). Like all hard-neck garlic, Spanish Roja will produce curly ‘scapes’ (flowering stems), which can be snipped off and used for another culinary treat in late spring. This variety grows well in cold winter areas, and is cold-hardy to Zone 3.
Svea: A late-season Porcelain-type, Svea is the ‘chunky tuna’ of Porcelains, producing large, flattened bulbs with 5 to 8 fat, easy-to-peel cloves. The colorful bulbs show red and purple stripes on their skins and clove wrappers. Blessed with strong, spicy-hot flavor when raw, the flavor mellows to a tasty nuttiness when roasted or baked.
German Porcelain:
One of the best hard-neck garlics for flavor and keeping, this robust and extra-hardy heirloom variety in the Porcelain group offers large, impressive 2.5 to 3” bulbs with 4-6 easy-to-peel jumbo cloves for easy kitchen use. Beautiful well-formed bulbs are wrapped in thick white luxuriant parchment-like skins with inner layers splashed red-purple, almost too beautiful to eat. Cloves are usually striped with purple.
Flavor is rich, garlicky, and medium hot. Grows well in any climate. Stores at least 6 months, up to 8 to 9 months when stored properly (in a cool dark place).
SHALLOTS:
Shallots are pretty expensive when you buy them at the grocery store. These gourmet bulbs that combine the flavors of onion and garlic pack a lot of flavor and are used extensively in European cuisines. They are easy to grow, multiply well, and thrive with care and storage similar to garlic.
Holland Yellow Shallots:
Easy to grow! Their sweet, delicate flavor quickly makes them welcome in the kitchen. Bulbs are 1-3″ in size. Plant 12″ apart in the Fall for Summer harvest. Each bulb (set) planted will yield about 6-10 shallots.