Garlicana is a very small farm located in the southern end of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. Here a diverse array of garlic and shallots are grown without the use of toxic chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides or fungicides and careful attention is paid to sustainable soil practices. The farm specializes in less common varieties and developing new varieties through traditional seed breeding methods.
late Summer: September
It’s been a summer of fires here. The Dixon Fire was contained and mopped a few weeks ago. It was all very dramatic, what with a week power outage, constant helicopter traffic, tanker planes dropping red retardant, structural fire crews patrolling evac level 2 residences, charred leaves and ashfall. The fire made it as close as 720 yards from the farm. As the threat to to this little valley receded, so did the anxiety. Power back on, generator off, noise of the helicopters less frequent, the smoke diminished after an uncommon summer rain, it was time to take a breath and refocus on the farm. The fire was contained at just under 2000 acres. At most of the garlic is cleaned, the cover crop flailed and spaded, fall crops transplanted, pernicious purslane weeded out of the carrots, progress was made. On the afternoon of 5 September it was 105F and 15%rh when another fire sparked off. We went up valley to get sense of perspective and watch trees explode in swaths of crown fire. The helicopters dropping buckets of water and tanker planes dumping retardant returned. By evening the fire was assessed at 1700+ acres and massive doom cloud was visible many miles away. The fire, which was caused by logging, is now over four thousand acres. So it goes in the rural west, where the sun glows red. Don’t be surprised if there’s a lingering scent of smoke when you receive your garlic as it permeates everything.
Orders for fall are now being accepted. I’ll start shipping by 23-September. If you have queries, contact me. You may get a faster response by calling than email. It’s a landline so i won’t get your texts if you try to do that.
If the contact form doesn’t work, just email directly to garlic@garlicana.com (i actually prefer that to the contact form) and let me know.
When you send in your check, if there is neither a form nor piece of paper that includes who you are, your email and shipping address, i will neither send your order nor cash your check. Preferably there’s an order form with the varieties and quantities listed as it takes me time to search through emails to find your order on the computer which i generally do not bring into the garlic pack room but at least a reference to an email i can look up.
At this point, there’s no True Garlic Seeds available, there is True Seed Progeny. Until consistent farm help can be found, there’s simply not the time to sort them out. That said, i am intend to make available some small volumes of promising varieties derived from TGS that i have not necessarily named. I generally trial new accessions for several years. There are so many that it’s kind of a process of deselecting them. There are varieties that have useful traits but aren’t charismatic enough to come up with names and continually offer and yet, they are fertile and worth growing to make crosses. These accessions will be derivatives of varieties that have been pledged to OSSI, thus all offspring will necessarily remain in the public domain. If interested, inquire after harvest this summer. There is no list of these a quantities are limited to 1/4 each.
Please read the Contact/Order page before asking for prices, shipping information or the address.
A few years ago Garlicana did an online presentation for the Culinary Breeding Network’s Winter Vegetable Sagra. There was a whole week of presentations on garlic available here. Also, barring any unforeseen problems like catastrophic wildfires, health problems, etc. i am planning on attending the Culinary Breeding Network’s Variety Showcase event in the big bustling city of Portland on 8 Sept.
There are around 70 varieties of garlic on offer, comprising ten horticultural groups as well as a number of unclassified varieties, others that have been collected from the wild in Central Asia, and garlic developed from true seed. In addition there are 7 shallot varieties.
True Garlic Seeds
Garlicana used to offer true seeds. These were a byproduct of the still ongoing on-farm breeding project. While thousands of seeds are collected, this remains experimental. True Garlic Seed (TGS) is not a viable means to produce garlic as you would grow onions, it’s a long term project with inconsistent results. It can, however, be very rewarding and we are pleased to introduce many new and diverse garlic varieties If a nerdy, multi-year project to produce new garlic varieties appeals to you, Read more…
