Garlicana is a very small farm located in the southern end of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. Here a diverse array of garlic and shallots are grown without the use of toxic chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides or fungicides and careful attention is paid to sustainable soil practices. The farm specializes in less common varieties and developing new varieties through traditional seed breeding methods.
December
It’s well into Autumn. The leaves have mostly dropped, the ground is bright with colored maple and cottonwood litter. With the abundant rainfall in November, we hope to see the return of coho salmon. Eagles are frequently perched on a snag overlooking the creek, scanning for a meal. As i write, it’s 22 F outside and during a dry spell. While frosts have been frequent, this is the first freeze hard enough to kill off the cauliflower and broccoli underneath row covers. Cold tolerant root crops are really sweetening up though. We are in the midst of planting and as ever when doing small volumes of so many varieties, it’s slow going. It’s nice to look out and see the fresh straw mulch atop finished beds.
It’s not to late to plant. There’s still plenty of seed stock available overall but varieties grown in small volumes are selling out so unless you are okay with subs, do check for availability.
If you have queries, contact me. Try calling if you don’t get a quick response to email. It’s a landline so i won’t get your texts if you try to do that.
If the contact form doesn’t work, just email directly to garlic@garlicana.com (i actually prefer that to the contact form) and let me know.
When you send in your check, if there is neither a form nor piece of paper that includes who you are, your email and shipping address, i will neither send your order nor cash your check. Preferably there’s an order form with the varieties and quantities listed as it takes me time to search through emails to find your order on the computer which i generally do not bring into the garlic pack room but at least a reference to an email i can look up.
At this point, there’s no True Garlic Seeds available, there is True Seed Progeny. Until consistent farm help can be found, there’s simply not the time to sort them out. That said, i am intend to make available some small volumes of promising varieties derived from TGS that i have not necessarily named. I generally trial new accessions for several years. There are so many that it’s kind of a process of deselecting them. There are varieties that have useful traits but aren’t charismatic enough to come up with names and continually offer and yet, they are fertile and worth growing to make crosses. These accessions will be derivatives of varieties that have been pledged to OSSI, thus all offspring will necessarily remain in the public domain. If interested, inquire after harvest this summer. There is no list of these a quantities are limited to 1/4 each.
Please read the Contact/Order page before asking for prices, shipping information or the address.
A few years ago Garlicana did an online presentation for the Culinary Breeding Network’s Winter Vegetable Sagra. There was a whole week of presentations on garlic available here. Also, barring any unforeseen problems i am planning on attending the Culinary Breeding Network’s Sagra Del Radicchio event on December 8th.
There are around 70 varieties of garlic on offer, comprising ten horticultural groups as well as a number of unclassified varieties, others that have been collected from the wild in Central Asia, and garlic developed from true seed. In addition there are 7 shallot varieties.
True Garlic Seeds
Garlicana used to offer true seeds. These were a byproduct of the still ongoing on-farm breeding project. While thousands of seeds are collected, this remains experimental. True Garlic Seed (TGS) is not a viable means to produce garlic as you would grow onions, it’s a long term project with inconsistent results. It can, however, be very rewarding and we are pleased to introduce many new and diverse garlic varieties If a nerdy, multi-year project to produce new garlic varieties appeals to you, Read more…
