Question Where can I buy organic Russian and Yugoslavian garlic? We love garlic and would love to encourage locally grown garlic businesses. Unfortunately my garlic did not make it this year. Why? Gloria Hall-Proehl via email
Answer For local garlic, farmers' markets are the place to look between now and October. Farmer markets' happen all over Vancouver and the Lower Mainland, usually on weekends. Obtaining clusters of eating garlic/seed garlic in fall is easy. The hard part is matching the varieties you want with the right farmer at the right time in a place reachable by you.
The Russian garlic you're looking for is probably Red Russian - a hard-neck with very large cloves. But there is also White Russian garlic. This has very small cloves that are exceptionally longkeeping (well over a year) but so fiddly to prepare for cooking.
There are a huge number of different garlic varieties. Yugoslavian is excellent, but so are Persian Star, Saltspring, Fish Lake No. 3, Mountain Top and Red German. All of these are hard-neck with large cloves, which are resistant to braiding.
Chinese garlic can be braided. It's a soft-neck which produces large clusters of smallish, rounded cloves. Greek White is another soft-neck which keeps longer than most hard-neck garlic, but not as long as White Russian.
Virtually all soft-neck garlics produce smaller cloves but more per cluster. Hard-neck garlic plants produce larger cloves but fewer of them.
About your garlic failing: rich, moist soil in a sunny place is the nutrition it needs in the growing season. But planting in September or October is very important because it enables the roots to get a good start before winter.
I wonder if you kept your garlic watered through the unusual hot spell we had in May? It likes evenly moist soil until about mid-July when it begins to die back and can be encouraged to dry out ready for harvesting.
Also important is taking off the garlic scapes immediately they develop. The very young scapes can be eaten.
Anne Marrison is happy to answer garden question. Send them to her via amar [email protected]
