Quote:
Originally Posted by b54red
I've planted many varieties but most of the best tasting garlics are not reliable in our hot humid climate. One of the best all around good, full flavored garlics to me is Inchelium Red. It has a rich garlic flavor with decent sized cloves that can be peeled without too much trouble. I also like the various Creole types but they are very small with little cloves that are harder to peel. If you want a nearly foolproof variety that is extremely mild then try some Elephant Garlic. I've been growing it for 30 years with only a few bad seasons. It makes huge bulbs with 3 to 5 cloves that you might think are too big to use; but don't worry they are so mild I don't know how you can use too much. We put 9 or 10 cloves in the pot roast in the oven and it makes wonderful gravy with a very mild hint of garlic. If you did this with any other type of garlic I think it would be so garlicky it would be inedible.
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Towards the end of october I put out a couple hundred individual bulbs of the supermarket varieties ...all from beautiful, white, large, solid heads, as well as several heads for elephant garlic. They are all now a foot tall and unscathed by several 26 degree F nights, heavy frosts, and continual rain since then. They were simply laid atop the soil covered with manure and deep hay and then more manure. Some sites indicate that I still have until January if I wanted other varieties, but most vendors say colosed out for the season. No idea when they begin shipping again, but in the future I would enjoy trying some others as long as they are not hot and cloying. The jar of crushed/chopped garlic I primarily use is not of a very pleasant variety..not hot but a very concentrated flavor that is TOO garlic as in cloyingly harsh..not at all smooth in taste. I DON't like the hot purple, red varieties I tasted in San Jose and SF. What I do like is a smooth, pleasant, non-ascerbic, non-cloying style...whatever that is. Must be my anglo/southern taste are simply not used to the powerful stuff...either that or some deeply seated taste memories of my mother's lavish use of ancient garlic powders in the fifties. She was of the Campbells soup casserole generation, boxed pizza mixes, spam, and chipped beef on toast. Her one cooking setting was HIGH and whether with black pepper or garlic..if a dash is good, several tablespoons must be better.