10 Garlic Varieties 

Bruce, I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but if you cut the leaves down to the storage length, at the same time you trim the roots, you can dehydrate the leaves to make Green Garlic Powder. We use a lot of this!

Great videos, love when you do trials.

This encourages me to try something different as I have grown the same variety for years

Put my garlic in a couple days ago. Have been using “Music Porcelain” for six years. Reducing the number I plant. Can’t use them all and I give away quite a bit. Needless to say, I love garlic.

A most informative video. I was gifted a 4 clove bulb of stiff neck garlic,.planted them, they produced 20 cloves along the skapes. Planted them the second year along with the little bulbets from the scapes, The bulbets grow for four years befor they proguce multi clove bulbs. Such great fun growing garlic No shortage of garlic at my house.

Please don't neglect to harvest the green leaves on the plants. These taste wonderful and can be used in many things where garlic cloves are too strong, such as in fresh salads, finely diced. Dehydrating them, as others have mentioned, is also a great way to get more use out of the plant.

I love side-by-side comparisons like this. I appreciate the added problems to record all of this. Thank you.

I love garlic, I'm going to grow some this year. Will start planting around Halloween.

I just finished shopping for hard-neck garlic, to plant in the next few weeks (Zone 7, Virginia, USA). After watching this yesterday, the penny dropped on something I did not previously understand. In the U.S., garlic offered for planting is sold as either "garlic seed" or as "culinary garlic". The difference being that culinary garlic is the smaller bulbs, for each variety. And is cheaper. The upshot is that, as I read it, the U.S. retail market for garlic somewhat reinforces the notion of planting big cloves, not small ones. As you demonstrated here. Separately, have really enjoyed watching your videos over the years. Finally signed up on Patreon, and I hope to see many more such videos.

outstanding, I appreciate the effort that went into this trial and commentary

I’m so glad’you do these trials and share, you’re the best ’intermediary scale’ tester out there ! I live in France in a near-Irish climate in some ways, and vicariously through this channel I can think and re-think my growing practices.

Useful video I didn't expect that each bag of garlic can produce different shapes of cloves as we always buy one or two from the shops thank you very much guys

Subscribed on June 30 2019 to your Patreon and not regretting any single day. Love the context, love the videos, love the data and information. Thanks for all the insights, Bruce.

Fantastic, by far the best and most honest analysis of garlic seeds and cultivation I have ever seen. Many thanks and good luck in the garden.

Thanks for sharing. I have grown up to 13 varieties of garlic, mostly hard neck in the past. I have settled with 4 varieties that seem to grow the best in my location. Indeed, every year is different, and one should grow varieties a few years to compare before making choices. Thanks again and happy planting.

Best gardening channel. Ever. Amazing.

I'd be interested to hear more about the flavor or the different varieties, usefulness in the kitchen, and shelf life. Quantity of yield is important, but if a similar producing variety is better tasting, that'd make my decision.

Your videos are gold. I always learn something new.

Great job!! We see your videos from Catalonia 🙌😊

I did have a chuckle when you said that you are good at adding varieties but not finishing varieties. I can relate to that. 😁 I have finally narrowed down a cherry tomato that is my favourite. That took over a decade, lol. I still try a few here and there but I now compare them all with my favorite. A black cherry of some kind. I say that just because I have been saving seed from them for so long. I have been building my garlic patch as well. I now have about 25 bulbs to break up and plant. It is a hard neck and produces 5 distinct cloves of a few centimeters in length and width. I harvest them when the greens are 2/3rds dead. That is what I was taught and the reason is so that the bulbs don't separate in the ground and so that the paper skins keep things tightly together. It has always worked for me. I leave the stalks so the bulb can take what it needs to finish off, etc. I always cut the scapes and make pesto or pickle them. Quite tasty. It will for sure affect your bulb in the end if you do not cut them. I think you should grow it in the tunnels if it works out better for a nice quality bulb. You could easily companion plant them with other things. ☺

morado looks the most appealing by far.

Excellent research!

Well done!

I am in a zone 4 in northern MI. I started out with almost 17 different varieties, my daughter and I lost the "map" of the names the first year and have just been growing the best of what comes ever since. I would bet there is still about 10 different ones left but it's hard to say. Its sort of funny, they all look/grow different, finish different times all mixed together, and taste different, but we cant single one out and love our motley crew of garlic. Probably will never change. Thanks for another great vid!

Thank you . This was Very informative

The garlic scapes are delicious just fried with olive oil. It is worthwhile to harvest them Bruce, it also helps to get growth into bulbs rather than scapes. It is quite a high extra yield.

Great work, im following you know!!

Thank you for sharing

I'm half italian and I grow about 100 bulbs each year. I got my original bulbs from a friend and have no idea what variety they are! Whatever they are, the grow and store well so I haven't given them a second thought, so, thanks for this video! You collect so much valuable detailed data! How many hours do you work in the gardens each day?

Really interesting findings!

We grow hardneck in northern US. Last year I planted too early and, yes, too much growth and many of variety pack didn’t make it through the winter. I believe the Musik and Red Chesnik were winners. This year I waited for frost and then 2-3 weeks after to plant. I thought that would be Halloween, but the weather changed quickly and I planted in 2 weeks so I wouldn’t be out in the cold and snow and that is what today-Halloween-is. You have a lot of garlic and they say softneck keep better, I couldn’t say as I’ve never tried them here. It’s a lot of work to keep track of and processing. Good job.

I am sorry that I cannot contribute! I have been watching you for years and feel like I am stealing/taking advantage of you! I wish you the best of health and (if any consolation) inspired by you, I will use any occasion to give some back to those around me. Thank you my friend, you really take this to the...best level!

Always useful x

It's great to see garlic being taken so seriously. I'll bet your tunnel smelt wonderful - did it help with bug control at all?

Ty for info. I love growing garlic but I'm not great at it. Getting better each year I guess

As a scientist, I pronounce you a scientist (lol) Well done! Still, I think the taste is something you could explore more as in a backyard garden when you can a lot in a small space quality would be more important than quantity.

I was going to make some comments about leaving scapes and too many dead leaves on harvest, but you explained all that, and the graphs were very informative and useful. Generally, they confirmed the scientific studies that have shown the selection of big cloves leads to big bulbs, but maybe not 100% in all cases, thank you!

Wow-I am so jealous of those massive roots. I get good garlic but I can imagine how much better they could be because my roots are half that size.

Pure quality content, thanks a lot ! I would never have thought of growing garlic in a greenhouse, but I'm going to think about it. A garlic/bean/spinach rotation, for example, sounds interesting. Greetings from belgium.

I'm starting trials this year in north Florida. Thermidrone and Lorz this year. Now I'm hoping Termidrome just likes hotter weather than you have. My goal is to eventually grow a mild and a strong/hot variety. Planting starts next week. The one thing I've learned about alliums generally is that if a patch gets diseased, it's all diseased. But, the same variety 30 meters away is can be just fine. I try to split my planting now.

Wow! What a tremendous amount of hard work. Very interesting trial. Well done. Just wondering-what did you do with all that garlic?!?

I'm late this year with garlic and onions. You have just prompted me to order my sets from Fruithill farm.

Ten different, Wow!!😂

Have you tried growing elephant garlic? I grow it in north devon, outside,a similar wet climate, and it grows like stink with no issues, even without irrigation or fertiliser. I harvest not only the bulbs, but the scapes and sometimes the shoots (as technically theyre a leek). This way i have a yield all year around. If it turns out i dont need to harvest all the bulbs one year, the next year they will just form larger clumps. An added bonus is the tall flowers are not only very attractive, but the pollinators seem to love them too.

Hello Red. Enjoyed this trial. We are in the Catskills NY. and grow hard neck garlic here. We have developed 3 harvests from our garlic. The smaller cloves not used for eating we grow for green garlic in spring. Then the scapes used anyway you use garlic makes a great pesto. The bulb garlic. We have use a pre inoculate soak for bulbs ( mixing fish emulsion and baking soda and short soaking in hydrogen peroxide before planting) Harvesting scapes provides early crop and large heads. Best to you.

I recently met a successful small scale garlic farmer. I asked what his secret to huge seed-quality cloves was... he said he plants very late so only roots grow during the winter, and no green shoots develop at all until spring. He said it's best to plant after the ground has a frozen crust, around New Year's Day here in Washington State. I haven't done this myself yet, but want to compare results from Fall and post freeze plantings.

Shame you didn't try any Solent varieties which do well for us in N Wales (similar to Ireland climate) - Also, on selecting seed garlic. The cloves are a clone so will be basically as the parent so I wouldn't expect any strain development. But I could be wrong (often am!)

Try Lautrec Pink from France. My favourite to grow in Canada.

i love it when people go about thinking scientifically in their everyday lives. should be more common

"Morado" (which means purple in spanish) makes a perfect shape!

Hello Red I've been watching your videos for several years now. I like you started growing garlic from just a few bulbs. Living in Sweden I found several good varieties. Last July I moved to Romania and my Swedish garlic did well. If you can guide me to where I can but several good large varieties, I'd greatly appreciate it.

I audibly gasped when you showed the bulbs you grow in the polytunnel. Incredible and gorgeous! (There are two types of people in this world, those who are astonished by the size of ur cloves and normies.)

Something was getting my okra a few years ago. I found out that if you inoculate them with a beneficial microbe appropriate for the type of plant, it will basically occupy the space that any bad microbe could use to infect. You can't use super salty fertilizer though or you will have to reinoculate.

Hi, for rust in dictoyledons it comes from a lack of calcium and magnesium, we first look at the pH of the substrate. There is a blockage of calcium and magnesium below pH 6.5. if not that, we look at the presence of calcium and magnesium in the substrate. If there is calcium and magnesium in the substrate, we look to see if the Liebig barrel is respected, that is to say that all the trace elements are present and assimilable. Certain plants have always extracted the transport and transformation of calcium magnesium by a mycorrhiza. Forced mycorrhization after germination can solve the problem of calcium assimilation. TNC MycorrMax is a good mycorrhiza complex. And 5th point is maybe there is too much light, a little shade sail can also help. All this is for dicotyledons but for monocotyledons it remains to be verified. You have some ideas for removing the rust now. Thanks for your video see you next time. bye

for me, my top three "needs" are Yield, Flavor, Storability, in that order. If someone were to ask, I would say I am a gardener/foodie, neck and neck, tough to see which is more my personality. So, flavor is important. I cook. A LOT. making sauces, meals, etc. So, for me, flavor is key. How it hold s up. i am only recently coming to garlic, as a crop I grow , and still learning what grows in my garden, here in New England. I have so far only planted two varieties of Hardneck. This coming weekend, I will be planting 3 varieties: Two new for me: Northern White Hardneck and Chesnok Red last 2 years: Kejora Siberian hardneck Garlic I am not happy with the Siberian Red, so, I need to find one that does well.

I have been growing hard neck garlic in zone 9b in California for 20 years. I frequently plant as many as 300 cloves. I have grown varieties from Turkmenistan and Armenia because we like the flavor and they produce large, easy to peel cloves. I plant the cloves in November, and have always dug them up the first week of June. However, a large portion of the plants have formed “witches brooms” the past two years. Last year I thought I had harvested them too late. This year I began digging up a plant every week or two beginning in early April to see how the cloves were developing. Some plants had formed “witches brooms” by mid April and had produced as many as 8 scapes where they should have had only one, and the cloves had separated. I suspect this formation of “witches brooms”. Is caused by the highly variable winter weather we have experienced the past two winters, caused some plants to behave as if they had experienced a summer and were in their second year in the ground. I a now looking for a variety of garlic that is less likely to form “witches brooms”. That may very well be a soft necked variety.

Great video! Have you tried using a mustard cover crop to help cut down the rust? I live on the southern east coast of USA and because of the humidity rust is an issue in my garden. I find when I grow a cover crop of mustard it helps. Greatly cut back the rust on my beans and garlic. I grow everything outdoors.

Thanks for another very useful video. One thing you didn't touch on though and that is the importance spacings have on size, I wonder if some of your smaller cloves were a little closer to one another. I remember reading one of Titchmarshes books and he said to buy in fresh every year. I wonder if those who are suffering from repeated disease every year (rust) are causing it by re-use.

A very helpful video, thanks. What preparation did you make to your beds before planting the garlic? I’m going to my allotment this morning to put garlic in. I’ve been advised however to add a wee touch of lime to the beds? I mostly use a no-dig approach but not exclusively. My biggest task today will be keeping my Springer Spaniel pup from digging the bulbs up before the net goes over the bed!

I think "your strain" did quite well - the smaller cloved producing almost as much as the larger cloves for the other varieties. Could it be that they struggled outside because you're always (?) replanting from those in the polytunnel? (i.e they're adapted to that microclimate, and not to combat rust outdoors)

instant like

Speaking as a former chef, larger bulbs are easier to work with in the kitchen as well

How do you cure them? We always seem to fail on that part with it being to high humidity...

Hello I'm watching from Philippines, we have black garlic in Philippines and native garlic that are very small but very aromatic,l

I’ve grown both Therador and Messidor (a cross between Therador and Messidrome) this year and both did really well. My soil is river clay with an undeep hummus layer on top. This is different from your soil I think, which either suggests these varieties are tolerant of different soil and weather conditions, and therefore fairly easy to grow, or that it was just a really good year for these varieties. Another variety I grew was Valverde, which didn’t do as well, so for me at least, it wasn’t the case that garlic in general grew well this year.

If you did not cut the scapes off the hard neck garlic, did you get useful garlic from them? In my experience, leaving the flower on hard neck garlic makes the bulb almost too small to use.

This dude is a legend do some diffrent variety of rosemary or thyme

❤

It would be interesting if there would be a chance to add a couple of garlic varieties from Eastern Europe like Poland, Ukraine etc. to see and compare how they feel and grow in Ireland's climate. From these varieties which you were growing I knew and was growing only Messidrome which is Dutch variety as much I know, not the best yield if comparing with old garlic varieties from Poland and Latvia. Great experiment & expierence, thank you for sharing!

Great project. Good to know about the row cover. I thought I was the only one with nosy birds.🪱👍🏼😁

You should send samples to some foodtube channels, perhaps they know how to compare and taste them. A collab for future comparisons like this for different plant varieties would be cool to see.

I think on going experiments is needed. Plus which one taste the best??

2:09 Looks like purple blotch fungal disease/ downy mildew, centre screen at top :). Treatable with organic inputs. Try potassium bicarbonate, followed by beneficial bacteria and fungal spray. Great video. Many thanks from Australia

Good presentation. Appreciate the employment of the scientific method. I look forward to your replication studies. Happy you found a funding method that works for you 🙂 (I've just finished weighing a few sources of garlic, and have written it down in a log book. I miss research 😅). WRT young plants pulled up prior to adequate root development - I'm running a pilot experiment in an exposed earth bed (no poly tunnel) where I planted the cloves half between summer solstice and Autumn equinox, and have been pruning the greens off to mulch level to see the impact on bulb development. My theory is that the roots will establish more extensively without having to also support the greens. Given that hard frost is still some weeks away, differentiation of the Scape buds, nor the clove buds should have yet occurred. Yesterday was the last scheduled pruning. Nine months from now will tell if I'm on to something or not.

why do you mainly grow softneck in ireland? it get cold enough to grow hardneck.

Really interesting to see these results - I was just thinking about your previous garlic video while out in my own garden today! You mentioned briefly that the different garlics have different flavors and I remember watching Alton Brown's "Good Eats" program growing up where he said smaller cloves are more potent. Have you found this yourself? Any chance you could get access to a mass spectrometer? 😂

My garlic and shallot yields have been so horrible. I hope I can find a garlic that grows well for me.

The aroma and taste of garlic and other alliums is a sulfur compound, is it beneficial to fertilize with sulphur?

where did you source your garlic samples, good sir?

Hi, just a thought on the garlic rust trial next year, maybe consider growing the different variety of garlic in separate locations through your gardens, to ensure a fair comparison. As you will know the rust sprite travel by wind and having distance in between can show us witch variety is truly the most resistant to that pesky rust…

Great video Bruce. Our climate here in Western Oregon is similar to yours much of the year, 5 degrees and rainy, but with warmer, drier summers. For several years now I've only grown garlic in one of my high tunnels due to rust issues, and they do far better in there than outside. I've never seen soft neck garlic the size of yours, all of the soft neck varieties here are half that size or less. Such a great video I've decided to increase my Patreon sub, hope it can help you keep it going.

Adding sulfur will help with or completely eliminate fungal problems.

Great video!! Are you sure about the Thermidrome, I just bought Thermidrome clovers and they are weighing in average 4,47 g after removing the smallest and the largest is 6.78 g, a quick google search brings up a number of 216 cloves per kg or 4.63 g per clover for Thermidrome. around 4.5 g would fit a lot better in the graph.

💚💚💚

If you harvest the scapes the bulbs get bigger AND you can make garlic-scape-pesto.

Did you amend your soil at all? This will be my first time trying garlic.

I had birds pull red onion sets before

I feel like the trial on yeild across varieties is done. Further explorations could be focused on the 4 varieties. Perhaps closing out the study on clove size planted to bulb size harvested by comparing across sizes across the 4 varieties is the next exploration. A quick taste trial of "acceptable or not" among the 4 could be screen test if further taste trials are necessary. IMO, if among the 4, there's one that can score 4 out of 5, comprehensive taste trials across 10 varieties aren't a priority. Rust resistance seems important especially for the outside gardens. As someone who cooks, I think price (yeild), flavor, clove size (proxy for effort to peel), and storability are important to garlic.

Garlic from clove plants are clones of the parent so there will be little adaptation, you will be only selecting for that particular strain that fits best. For adaptation you need to grow garlic from seed.

😊👌

Do you let your selected saved cloves go to seed? If not, I'm not sure if you're doing much genetic selection at all. You might just be cloning the best one seed from the original batch over and over

I am from Nürmberg, germany. We here have an area called Knoblauchsland litterally translated into garlic land :) ofcause. It is an agricultural area at the outskirts of the city which traditionally is responisble for the cities produce. I have been to ireland in the past which is beautiful and i was amazed by the mild(nearly tropical?) stable weather due to the atlantic currents as i was told. Still in many ways it seemed very similar to the rather inland conditions around here. Where did you get your garlic variaties from?

Regarding the rust; when do you plant? If you plant early, the foliage will be quite old when rust comes around, and more easily affected. I recommend planting early December or thereabouts, then the green growth will start slow, but will still be relatively young and vigorous in spring, and therefore more resilient. The actual bulb itself will only start to grow around May 1, and it's then that you want your garlic plants to be at their best, not beyond their best. Regarding taste: the hardnecks have a more intense flavour, which real garlic lovers prefer. Generally garlic is classified into 10 different groups, most of them hardnecks. There's a softneck group called Artichoke - because the cloves tend to come in layers in this group - and by far most of your varieties are from this same group, so that's not a lot of variety. Artichokes are very common in France and Italy, they do well in regions with milder winters. Some garlic groups like much colder winters, but some hardnecks that do well in milder winters are Marbled Purple Stripes and Rocamboles. That are the names of the groups, not varieties, but varieties in the same group behave very similar, so garlic experts often mention the group instead of the variety. Marbled Purple Stripes and Rocamboles store less well than Artichokes, but then you can use those first, and save your Artichokes and Creoles (Morado is in the Creole group) for later use. Rocamboles are ready to harvest a few weeks before the others, that's an interesting thing about them. They're only growing weak scapes. Most hardnecks grow strong scapes, that you'll want to cut before the flower head is starting to form, because this drains a lot of energy away from the bulb. Your garlic is looking great; big bulbs, bigger than what I'm growing, but I guess my soil care isn't great, and average sized bulbs do for me. Thanks for the vid.

When you’re saving the largest garlic cloves for the next planting, are these being saved from all the garlic bulbs or just from the largest garlic bulbs? My reasoning is that to breed a specific cultivar you would need to be culling whole genetic strains and that would only be happening if you eliminate whole bulbs of garlic not just the tiniest cloves.

In all we have to climatize garlic varieties to our local climate, which may take many seasons.

What's a politunnel?

Just a question about your so called adapted crop. Does garlic ever go to seed? My understanding is that the bulb forms a genetic clone meaning there is no way for it to adapt to the environment.

9:45 why are you disappointed? You took that variety for those years to its greater yield expression and it shows when you compare to the new non selected for yield cloves of it. Do that for 2-3 harvests to the peinador and other 2 high weight bulb varieties and it will be better probably too. You even have cloves to sell that are superior yielding in the category or variety you have had for years and to the buyer of that variety that’s great advantage compared to buying it from a small Clove supplier, so congrats! Keep going!

Nice video! I would not expect any adaptation due to the fact that you're growing clones. Maybe only very minimal epigenetic changes. Have you not considered growing from seed? Genetic variation is critical to adaptation, so growing different types and letting them cross, and continually propagating from seed, should lead to a superior population adapting to your land, as well as giving you the option of selecting for phenotype - though best to select for just a few phenotypic traits, so as to not unnecessarily limit the genetic diversity. If you worry about yield, you could grow a patch of clones and another patch of evolutionary adaptive seed grown plants, and as your evolutionary population throws out some good plants, you could use their bulbs to replace your clonal population, whilst continuing your adaptive population from seed. This way you can have good yields from the clones but be improving your population each year, and also keeping up with the climate changes that are so rapid these days. You can do the same with potatoes, growing from seed and from clones in parallel. I would recommend this with all crops really. This is the way to create your own landraces, which can be far superior to growing heirloom crops since in almost all cases heirlooms will be adapted to land and farming methods quite different from ones own, and especially if they are self compatible, then even if you are growing from seed rather than clonally, they still won't be adaptive. So for self compatible plants, you can make an adaptive population by selecting many different varieties and selecting for higher rates of outcrossing, like exserted stigmas in tomatoes for example, and can use hand pollination initially to create a hybrid swarm. Even within 3 years there should be significant adaptation to your land.

What do you feed your garlic? Forgive me if I asked before watching the entire video.