 ALLSUN FARM GARLIC
In Australia garlic is planted in late autumn and harvested sometime in November.
Properly cured and stored it will be at its best for eating from harvest through to the following April or May. By early winter the cloves get ready to grow and form a small green shoot at their centre. This shoot can have a bitter taste so it is best to remove it before cooking the garlic.
The best way to store garlic is to hang in up in a cool, dry place - a braid makes this easy and is also decorative.
500 gm braids of garlic are available on this website from early December till mid March. Treat yourself or a friend to this practical present grown with care in the gardens at Allsun Farm.
There are a couple of months in the middle of winter when garlic should not be an ingredient in your cooking, however, if you have garlic in your garden you can start picking the green shoots in late winter. We always sow a bed or two of closely spaced small garlic cloves that would normally be discarded at planting time. The green shoots make a welcome treat in early spring and can be stir fried, added to slow cooked dishes or eaten raw in salads.
In many parts of Australia the best time to plant garlic is early April. However it can be put in the ground as late as mid June. Later plantings do not allow for maximum vegetative growth before bulbing so unless your area is specifically suited for late planting get your garlic in the ground as early as possible.
Allsun Farm Varieties - available for planting or eating
* State Quarantine restrictions prohibit us from sending garlic to
Western Australia, South Australia or Tasmania.
Australia produces only a fraction of its garlic needs so at this time of the year it is hard to find good quality Australian grown garlic. 'Allsun Farm' is now able to sell a limited quantity of high quality, organically produced bulbs suitable for planting this season.
It is always best to plant the biggest cloves from the biggest bulbs so get in early because we will sell the biggest garlic bulbs first. Divide up your bulbs into individual cloves and plant the big ones, right way up into well drained fertile soil. Do not overfeed over winter and make sure that you water well in the spring.
All our garlic varieties are full flavoured - punget and garlicy!
Hard Stemmed Red Garlic
Mellow, complex flavored, easy to peal, mid-season garlic with very few small cloves in the centre of the bulbs. An all-round pleaser in the kitchen! Purple striped on the outside of the bulbs, pale purple skin on individual cloves. The hard stem makes it unsuitable for braiding.
Soft Stemmed White Garlic
A good keeping, mid-season, white , soft stemmed garlic. Suitable for braiding and an excellent keeper.
Late Season Soft Stemmed Garlic
We harvest this garlic variety 3 weeks after the others that we produce. By growing a late and an early variety you can spread the picking and have more options if the weather is unpredictable. Our late season soft stemmed garlic has a tall rather than a squat shape, white outside skins and beautiful pink inside skins. Good flavour and a very good keeper.
Soft Stemmed Red Garlic
Excellent flavour and early harvest. This soft stemmed, squat shaped garlic is striped on the outside and has dark purple skins on the individual cloves. It is always ready to braid for Christmas gifts.
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