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: When you’re trying to decide what varieties of garlic to grow and you realize that there are hundreds of varieties of garlic heavens, where do you start? And so, there are six different DNA types of garlic and there are so many different kinds. But here’s one of the main first filters that I think of all garlic can be broken down into hard neck or soft neck. And so deciding which of those is better suited for you is a great way kind of first filter in your decision making process.
So here’s an example: the hard neck and soft neck the main things to keep in mind the hard necks have a hard neck in fact, the scape that will come out and be delicious as pesto, as pickles, in 1000 other ways. That hard, that is the hard neck that scape is the continuation of the hard neck of the garlic and you can tell if it’s a hard neck even if its scape is long gone. There in the center of the top you can see that white circle that is the diameter of the former life of the hard neck of scape. And soft necks have no such hard neck if you will. You can see there’s just these series of papery leaves, the stem that has dried down. So if you want the scape, if you want them to pickle to eat, you want hardneck garlics, super simple. If you want to braid garlic, by all means softneck is what you want. I do have a friend who has successfully braided hardneck garlic, but it’s kind of a thing. And I highly recommend keeping it kind of on the binary even though I never recommend things being black and white.
Other things to keep in mind. Generally hard neck garlic is more cold hardy than soft neck. However, if you’re getting your seed stock from Fruition Seeds, you can rest assured that it’s all regionally adapted and so are separate softneck garlic is Regatusso and Regatusso is a really exquisitely adapted variety. I’m just blown away by it. I definitely grew up growing softneck varieties in my father’s garden and I was like oh yeah, we grow hard necks here Dad. This Regatusso as brought from Sicily to Western New York, the Geneseo area in the late 1800s. And it’s been adapting here ever since. And it is as cold hardy as German Extra Hardy White and all of these other profoundly well adapted varieties that we have. So if you want to grow softneck in your life, I hope that you do definitely choose Regatusso with confidence and choose others with curiosity.
And so another generalization you can make about hard necks versus soft necks. Hard necks generally are easy to easier to peel but don’t have as long of storage life. A shelf life over the winter where soft neck garlics they generally in the fall are harder to peel. But they last over a year often. And once they’re eight months or so into their storage, they start to become easier to peel; check out my video tutorial more and why. But friends, I hope that you get to try all of these different varieties across the years. And that’s why we’re starting in 2020. We’re having our first annual garlic tasting party. That’s totally public. It’ll be in the beginning of August on a Saturday with you pick dahlias. And yeah, we’re just going to taste a bunch of garlic because they all taste a little different.
And I have to tell you, I grew up here in western New York, and there’s so many different varieties of apples. And so as a little girl, an Apple was not an Apple was not an apple. I could tell you exactly why I preferred MCcouns over Macintosh over Empires. And I could tell you exactly what I loved about Jonamax and all these other varieties too, because it was just so fun and they were all so distinctly different. And maybe garlic isn’t as broadly diverse, but you might be surprised certainly, I was shocked to learn just how differently all these varieties taste. So some of them are very pungent and spicy. Some of them are more mild. Some also have the same flavor profile throughout and others of them are really diverse think juice versus wine, like juice. It will have you know, the kind of the same flavor and taste from front to finish where wine has a lot of complexity and a nuance and the front and the finish are often very and leave you in very different places. So some garlic is very just grape juice like juices, like where it has the same flavor throughout where others of them have these complexities and nuances that are really, really beguiling.
So I can’t wait for you to try all of these garlics and definitely come visit us on the farm sometime even if you can’t make it that day. There’s lots of other days that we’re open throughout the seasons and I can’t wait to share so much of this exquisite joy with you friends. Yes, I know that as you’re choosing garlic there are so many ways to choose garlic. And basically, a) you can’t go wrong and b) I hope you enjoy as I do every year growing both your gold standard varieties that have been friends for years, as well as brand new varieties you’ve never tasted and now make new friends and keep the old one is silver and the other is gold. One is hardneck the other softneck. May all these things be true for you.
