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.
Update: late September 2023:
Autumn is here. Several days of light frost came ahead of the first significant rain. I switched from packing seed orders to field work: spreading compost and amendments, chisel plowing, tilling and shaping beds. Cover crops were sown and harrowed. The final hilling was done on the winter leeks and crimson clover undersown in the disk tracks and slopes. The rain should finally knock down the persistent wild fire smoke and germinate the cover crops.
Seed orders are being packed and shipped. At this point, i need to get through the order stack before i can assess remaining inventory. There are many varieties i know i’ll be sold out of and can’t promise anything till i get somewhat caught up. When ordering, it is helpful if subs of similar varieties are acceptable. There had been a problem with the contact form that should be all fixed. If it doesn’t work, just email directly to garlic@garlicana.com (i actually prefer that to the contact form) and let me know.
Note that i raised prices by a dollar per pound and half pound. I’ll update the site to reflect that as soon as time permits.
Garlicana is looking for help this fall. In many ways, this is a typical farm residential internship, due to the great diversity of vegetable crops produced; needless to say, it’s very focused on garlic and a genuine interest is necessarily required. This would be an ideal place to learn a lot about every nerdy component of garlic and plenty about small scale organic vegetable production too. Please contact the farm if this intrigues you.
The USPS has discontinued offering “Region” boxes and packing tape. At least two-thirds of the orders have been shipped out using these boxes which enabled reduced shipping costs, particularly for small orders. At this point, nearly all orders will have to be sent using flat rate boxes. This is very disappointing. Do consider if ordering a pound or less, that it’ll cost the same as ordering 4-5 lbs.
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. Until 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.
A note on the 2024 season: There will be less space available to plant on in this section of field (crops here are on a four year rotation). There were also grow outs at a friend/neighbor’s farm which isn’t available the coming year. All this means, there will a reduction in the planting of garlic and shallots by several thousand cloves. Next year, many offerings will be reduced to smaller quantities, others not available. So the plan is to scale up fresh vegetable production. I have long fantasized about taking a sabbatical and making a podcast about the many facets of garlic, a project that i cannot afford the time to do at this point. If anyone is interested in assisting in this endeavor, let me know.
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.
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 occasionally offers true seeds. These are processed and cleaned in midwinter. Availability is limited and inconsistent. Offerings are a byproduct of the 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…
