Garlic Harvest

Carpathian Garlic is originally from the Carpathian Mountains in what they refer to as the Garlic Crescent. It is the only garlic we grow. We used to grow several different varieties. I would sell them at market and everyone would ask me to describe the different types and their attributes. The Carpathian is a large bulb with several large cloves that peal very easily, it is an oily variety with a bold very traditional garlic flavor, not hot like the Asian varieties, stores well......."And the others?" Oh those, yeah, they're uhhhh.....yeah.

So after a few years of that we concentrated on Carpathian.

At least ten years ago I bought my first Carpathian from another farmer who grew only garlic. He had several varieties and I bought a few and trialed them. I had seven pounds of Carpathian, the largest bulb no bigger than a ping pong ball. After growing it out for a few years I had a crop of about 800lbs, the average size well over 2 inches in diameter. I would put about 200 lbs of seed back in the ground and sell the rest. The average bulb weighs in at about 1/4lb and will yield 8 or 9 cloves to plant. I was then consistently harvesting 1200lbs or so every year.


In 2000, when I moved from the Independence Valley south of Rochester I took the Carpathian with me. I rented a trailer on a dairy farm and worked as a remodel carpenter in Seattle while I shopped for farms and tried to save money. I planted about 5o lbs just to keep the strain, and when Heidi and I finally did find this place the Carpathian was the first thing to go in the ground.

It took two years just to get enough stock to sell and still have some seed. Then, in the winter of 2006 just when we were getting back up to speed we had to plant our garlic in a marginal field that we leased from some friends down the road. We planted our 200lb bench mark, then watched in horror as the field we planted filled with water and remained a lake for almost two months over winter.

We managed to harvest about 35lbs of usable product the following spring. It is from there that we have once again slowly built up our garlic crop.

We harvested our garlic last Saturday the 25th of July, pretty much right on schedule, and we are curing it in our shade house. In a week or so we will clean and sort it and it will be ready for market. We will select out about 500lbs for seed and plant in mid September for next year. I have already chosen a site that is high and dry.

Carpathian really is a wonderful variety. I believe it is the best culinary garlic available; oily to the point that it once flooded and shorted out a friend's dehydrator as he made dried garlic to grind for garlic powder. As if that were not enough: the Carpathian Mountains border Transylvania making it quite likely that garlands of this particular variety were once worn to ward off vampires. It has been a real pleasure to enjoy such a long, rich relationship with this particular crop.