Our Variety
A few years back Graeme noticed an interesting variety of garlic growing in a Victorian vegetable garden. The bulbs a ‘purple’ variety, had originally been given to Graeme' friend by a local Italian gardener.
As a professional vegetable grower all his life, Graeme was fascinated. The big purple bulb grew without pest problems, peeled easily and tasted marvellous. Joking about it being a “glamour garlic” Graeme convinced his friend not to eat the thirteen precious bulbs. Instead he spent five years growing and multiplying the bulbs in a spare paddock at a nearby biodynamic fruit orchard. With dedication, each clove grew into a new large bulb until, finally, Graeme had enough for a small commercial trial.
There are hundreds of different kinds of garlic Allium sativum.
Our variety subspecies is ophioscorodon.
It is a hardneck type. An ‘old-style’ variety, closely related to wild garlic.
Some people call them ‘topsetting’ because of their seed head.
It has a flower stalk that curves into a circle. Like in this photo. The umbel is at the tip of the flower stalk.
The bulbs are fairly symmetrical and a globe shape. They form around the central woody stem (the hardneck).
The bulb skins are pale purple to off-white, but sometimes they can be deep purple as well. We don’t understand what causes this variation.
The skins are very easy to peel, which is something most cooks comment on.
The biggest bulbs start to sprout green shoots in late March. However, the smaller bulbs seem to think about germination much later. We recommend eating the biggest bulbs first.
