My garlic bulbs just finished drying and curing the other day, and I have been cleaning them up. I grew 20+ varieties of garlic this year. Most of these I have never grown before, and I have certainly never grown so many at one time. I was really surprised at how pretty some of them came out after I rubbed all the dirt off.
From left to right, these are Chesnok Red, Vekak Czech, Guatemalan Ikeda and Garlic Seed Foundation #65 garlics. The bottle cap is for size reference.
Here are Persian Star, Susan Delafield and Russian Softneck (which was kind of a strange name for what looked like hard neck garlic to me).
Finally Sweet Haven, Rosewood, Georgian Crystal and Gypsy Red.
I haven’t tasted any of these yet. It’s plants like these that strike me as such a shame, because only the gardener can really appreciate the beauty in something like this. Once it’s cooked into food you don’t see it anymore, and it’s not something that anyone would really buy in a store even if you could find it for sale somewhere. It’s a bit like swiss chard, that can look so pretty in the garden, but by the time you remove the stems and cook it, it just looks like cooked green leaves in the end.
Oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful if the colorful chards would stay colorful after cooking? And purple beans just maybe deepen to violet instead of switching to green? At least we get to appreciate them in the garden, though, right? 🙂
Some people will never know what they are missing by not having a garden!
Patrick,
I’ve found the purple tinged varities tastier than the all white skinned ones and wonder if this is your experience?
To be honest, I don’t really have any idea what these taste like yet. It wasn’t until a few days ago that I even realized I had all of this color, before that it was all covered with dirt. Many of the colors changed from the original bulbs, probably because my garden has different growing conditions than where they came from. Indeed it’s clear many of the flavors have also changed, probably for the same reason.
As much as I do like garlic, I am feeling a bit overwhelmed with 20 different kinds. There is limit to how much garlic you can eat in a short amount of time. It’s going to take me a little while to work my way through them and to be able to say anything useful about how they taste.
Since I am going to replant many of these for next year, I am also still trying to plan how much I need to set aside for this. I may not be able to taste some of them until after I’ve broken open the bulbs for planting and know I have some smaller cloves left over.
Many of these varieties I got last year as a single bulb, sometimes with as few as 4 cloves. For these I will need to use all or almost all I have as planting stock this year so I have enough to eat and share next year. Most of the red and purple tinged varieties fall into this category.
I am really excited about them and, as soon as I can, I’ll try to give all of you some feedback on the taste.
I’m buying even more varieties for planting this year, so next year I hope to have even more pictures and varieties available to share.
Oh wow! I knew there were many more varieties and types of garlic than are usually found in garden centres … but that’s an incredible collection you’ve got there.
I have a couple of home-grown bulbs of garlic ‘Music’ in my kitchen at the moment and I keep picking them up whenever I pass them to marvel at the beauty of their translucent purple stripes. So I can understand what a joy it must be to have all those lovely colours.
I’m looking forward to reading more about them when you’ve had a chance to do some tastings.