Growing Garlic

There are two main kinds of garlic. (Actually, there are three. The third kind, 'elephant garlic', Allium ampeloprasum, has absolutely enormous cloves, but has no garlic flavor worth mentioning.) The first is 'Common garlic', which is the usual white skinned supermarket type plus the silverskin types generally used for braiding and available at farmers markets; and 'Hard neck garlic', which is much less common.

Common garlic Allium sativum - Soft neck Garlic, Italian Garlic, Silverskin Garlic. There are two main 'types' of common garlic - the so-called 'artichoke' garlics we buy in the supermarket, and the 'silverskins', with either very white, or white blushed rose outer skins.

The bulbs of the common 'artichoke' types outer parchment is white, or off-white. There is usually a row of decent sized cloves around the outside, and irritatingly smaller, thinner cloves in the interior (although there are varieties with few, but quite large, cloves).

As we all know, removing the skin from these cloves is not easy. The bulb is wrapped in many layers of parchment, which continues up to form a soft parchment like neck ideal for using to braid all your bulbs together on a string to hang in the kitchen!

This garlic keeps well. Silverskins have the strongest flavor, and have numerous small cloves. They are very white, and the neck is sturdy and well suited to plaiting. The 'Creole' sub-group of the silverskin type is atypical, because they have only 8-12 cloves, are mild, and have a rose colored outer skin.

Hardneck Garlic Allium sativum var.ophioscorodon - Serpent Garlic, Stiffneck garlic, Rocombole Garlic, 10 clove garlic, Top Setting Garlic, Bavarian Garlic, Porcelain Garlic, Purple stripe garlic. These garlics have a stiff, sometimes thick, neck, usually with fewer, even sized cloves arranged around the central 'neck'.

Cloves number from four to twelve or so, depending on the variety. They are generally less reliable in changeable weather conditions than soft necked garlics, with the exception of the rocombole type.

The most distinctve of the three main hardneck types is 'Rocambole' Garlic. This garlic is similar to common garlic, but has two important differences. First, unlike common garlic, it throws up a flowering stem, called a 'scape'. Second, the bulb has relatively little outer parchment.

This last difference has a positive and a negative side. On the negative side, the individual cloves are often exposed, can be knocked off the bulb by rough handling, and can wither a bit after long storage. In addition, the bulbs don't look anything like as attractive as bulbs of common garlic.

On the positive side, they are a dream to remove the skin from -it is trivially easy- there is only one ring of decent sized cloves arranged around the woody central flower stalk and no smalls or thins, and it keeps almost as well as common garlic if stored carefully.

The tall flowering scape , for reasons of its own, makes a twisting loop as it unfurls it's 'flower' head (which contains not flowers, but tiny little bulbils). Thus it's alternative name, 'serpent garlic'. Clipping the flower stalk off early on significantly improves bulb size. It needs a cool winter and spring, and simply will not suceed in hot areas.

Purple Stripe Garlic has very white, thick, bulb skins, streaked with bright purple. They are quite a variable group, with some strongly flavored, some mild, some mid season,some late maturing. They store fairly well.

Be guided by local varieties. But make sure they genuinely are local! But even within a broad climatic region, there is sometimes enough climatic variation with such 'micro climate' influencing factors as altitude, proximity to the sea, mountain rain shadow effects, and so on that a variety that is reliable in one location may be marginally reliable in another. Advice of knowledgeable local home gardeners may be the key to variety choice.

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