We LOVE MN Garlic!
Be sure to sign up below for our newsletter to hear when garlic, scapes and other crops are ready for order. The newsletter will also give you the opportunity to pre-order your garlic, and have it ready for pick-up at the Minnesota Garlic Festival, Saturday, August 12th, 2023!
GARLIC: Our beautiful hardneck, porcelain (referring to the white outer wrapper) garlics have 3-5 large cloves per head and are very mild when cooked but quite strong when raw.
GARLIC SCAPES: See photo at right. The curly stalk of a garlic plant that if left unpicked, becomes the flower of the plant. Experts recommend picking the scape so all the energy can go to forming large cloves. They are delicious used like garlic, pickled or grilled like green beans.
MORE FLAVOR, BIGGER CLOVES:
There are hundreds of varieties and they fall into two sub-categories: hardneck and soft neck. Soft neck grows in warmer climates and can be stored for literally years (most garlic in grocery stores is grown in CA or China). Hardneck more reliably grows in our cold climate, and offers a wonderful diversity of flavor and very large cloves. While it won't store as long as "grocery store" varieties, you can easily buy your year's worth of garlic now and enjoy until scape season next June.
OUR VARIETIES: Within the umbrella of hardneck garlic varieties, one subcategory is Porcelains, named for their beautiful white wrappers.
MUSIC: A reliably large producing Porcelain, Music is named after Al Music, a Canadian credited for bringing the variety to Ontario within the last 40 years. This is one variety we're expanding this fall because it’s wonderful for whole roasting and general purpose cooking (sauces, stews, salsa, etc.).
DEERFIELD PURPLE: Branching out beyond Porcelains to Purple Stripe garlics, we offer Deerfield Purple, and it’s easy to see the reason for the name, and appreciate the lovely color. We're grateful to Chris and Joanne at Plum Creek Garlic for the introduction - they were the first growers in the Midwest to try it. Deerfield is a bit mellower when eaten raw, but holds its flavor well when cooked. Originally from Vietnam, it has smaller cloves, but still large in comparison to the grocery store, and we're excited to make it one of our feature varieties. Plan to buy it year after year from our fields.
