We love to share what we love... and we love garlic and shallots! You'll find gorgeous seed garlic & shallots listed here every late Summer/early Fall. And don't forget the fertility... our Organic Garlic and Shallot Fertilizer has specially blended diverse amendments to feed both our soil and our alliums, and in turn, us!
Transcript: Garlic is one of my favorite crops to grow. And I am not the first. Native to Central Asia, we’ve as a species been cultivating it for thousands of years. It was in tombs with the pharaohs. So it’s been beloved for a long time for its culinary as well as medicinal significance in our cultures. And I love garlic.
There are two different types as most people know, the soft necks and the hard necks, but not many people know that there are almost a dozen different types of distinct DNA types within those two, and that there’s a wide range of flavors possible within them. So I’m excited to share with you two of those DNA types today: the porcelains and the artichokes and tell you a little bit more.
So the porcelain types are marvelously named for the bright ivory white bulbs as well as often their clove wrappers are quite white and they’re freaking massive bulbs with massive cloves, and they have the highest allicin content, the sulfur compound of all the different garlic types. And that compound is what makes garlic flavor really garlic flavor. And it’s also what confers all the marvelous health benefits of garlic. So if you’re looking for a very robust, earthy and rather assertive garlic, go for a porcelain. If you’re also looking for the health benefits, go for the Porcelain. This particular variety is Italy Hill White. And it’s been grown here in the Finger Lakes for over 50 years. And another very popular porcelain type is Music and try growing them both. They have dramatically different flavor profiles in the same way that I definitely prefer certain apples over other apples. And I can call them up by name, I definitely have different have preferential garlics that they have just different flavors and so whether I’m making a roast, miso soup, frying eggs, I reach for different garlic at different times.
Another good thing to know about the Porcelain types is they’re very easy to peel, but they don’t have the longest storage. The easy to peel. This has a direct relationship with the fact that air can get into the cloves, they can readily, they’re quickly oxidized compared to other varieties. And so we try to eat all of our Porcelains by New Year’s throughout January is really the end of those times but that’s when the cloves that are less easy to peel are all of a sudden easier to peel. And we often eat those through the spring even until we’re harvesting other varieties.
Speaking of other varieties may introduce you Regatusso, a fantastic artichoke type, and artichokes are soft necks. They don’t throw scapes, so they’re wonderful to braid, and take a look at why they’re called Artichokes. You can see that almost Fibonacci sequence of two different clove rings inside, and they have less assertive heat, if you think of intensity of garlic, but they have a very floral garlic flavor.
And another thing I love about this particular variety is in addition to how long storing it is, this Regatusso has been grown here in the Finger Lakes since the late 1800s when the Regatusso family brought this softneck all the way from Sicily and it’s been growing here ever since. So, most people think soft necks don’t grow well here in the northeast. And indeed in general soft necks don’t grow as readily and don’t survive are cold, harsh winters as easily, but regional adaptation is significant. And this variety Regatusso is a marvelous, exemplary specimen to tell that story.
So, give lots of different garlics a try. Some will be earlier maturing than others. This Regatusso is about two weeks earlier than the Italy White and some will also be hard neck. This has a marvelous scape; this does not but if you want to braid them go for the soft next. And there are so many different kinds of culinary uses for them and different flavor profiles and every variety that I think you’ll fall in love with garlic even more than you already have. Give a few a try this season.
