Gourmet Heirloom Garlic

The gourmet garlic we ordered from Salt River Garlic in Kentucky arrived today. Never tried gourmet heirloom garlic before, so looking forward to giving this stuff a try.

Our Purchase:
2 lb Chesnok Red
1 lb Sampler: Inchilium Red, Red Toch, Simonetti, Mother of Pearl, Purple Glazer, and Martin Heirloom.

The sampler came with 6 varieties, each with 1-3 full garlic bulbs (various sizes and clove counts). The 2 lb bag had about 20 bulbs. A little pricey at $18/lb, but that seems to be the going rate just about everywhere, online. Hopefully we can turn around and sell it ourselves, down the road.

See below for a description of each type garlic we bought:

• Chesnok Red: Purple stripe hardneck, medium to extra large bulb, large cloves with reddish color on outer husk, wheat-sized bulbils, become sweet when baked, great for roasting, 9-10 cloves / bulb, good disease resistance, Salt River Garlic's favorite, rare
• Inchelium Red: Softneck artichoke, originally found on a Colville, Washington reservation, won the best tasting softneck garlic award from the Rodale Institute, produces a range of bulb sizes, flat-shaped bulbs with splashes of purple on the wrappers, contains 9-16 cloves per bulb, stores about 7 months
• Red Toch/Tochliavri: German softneck artichoke. Not too hot nor too mild but with a spicy bite. 12–18 cloves per bulb.
• Simonetti: Mild softneck artichoke originating from the Repulic of Georgia. Large bulb size, and flavor is very nice, even raw. 12-20 cloves.
• Mother of Pearl: Softneck culinary silverskin garlic. Tend to be smaller but stronger flavored than store bought.
• Purple Glazer: Similar to red toch, in flavor. Wheat-sized bulbils. Good for roasting or eating raw. Very sweet.
• Martin Heirloom: Hardneck culinary garlic. Tends to be smaller but stronger flavored than store bought. A very large topsetter with large bulbils. Here's the story on Martin's Heirloom as listed on forums.gardenweb.com:

I first bought it in 1982 or 1983 from Jung's Seed Co. It was the first and last time that I saw it. It was simply listed as "Topset Garlic", or something similar, and sold only as bulbils. Upon getting them home and reading the planting instructions, they were to be planted 4 to 5 inches deep. Whoops, that can't be right! I contacted Jung's to point out the error and it was due to failure to convert metric to English. It was supposed to be 4cm to 5cm! Therefore, anyone who bought a packet, and planted according to instructions, got nothing in return.

Now forward 20+ years and I've been growing it ever since. Thus far, nobody can find out what it originally was named or if it were merely a local landrace from somewhere. Information on where Jung's obtained it went up in smoke several years ago. Thus it's sort of a mystery as well.

It's a hardneck variety, possibly a German porcelain type, and with rather large bulbils. An old Bavarian friend told me that they used to use those large bulbils in cooking and making stock. Those bulbils will produce normal divided bulbs in a single season, and that's how we planted them for many years. Some years, we got a lot of small bulbs and other years had larger ones and always from bulbils. In recent years, we began planting back cloves instead and got really big bulbs. (Go back and read other threads about growing and harvest results for it.)

Overall, it's unlike any other garlic that I've grown. 

Martin

Good garlic webiste: http://www.filareefarm.com/