Krasnador Red

This is a hardneck marbled purple stripe variety though you'd hardly guess looking at the outer skin.

Coming from Russia as the name suggests it's supposed to do well in cold climates.

The inner skin of each clove, 8 in all, is reddish purple and cooks will like it as they are large and easy to prepare.

I've read that hardneck garlic doesn't store as long as softneck varieties and this one has a life of 5 - 7 months. Time will tell. As I've more hardneck varieties this year maybe I'll experience a 'hungry gap' when I've no garlic left in store. Hope not.

Taste?  Garlicky and it livened up a roast hand of pork.

Comments

[George Africa]

Hello John;

The garlic reminds me of the year the deer ate all my son's trials of potatoes, especially the Banana. Somewhere he read that garlic would foil the deer so we spent every weekend at farmers markets that fall buying garlic and planting it for the next year.

The garlic varieties all did well but the deer still ate the potatoes, starting at the tops and when potatoes formed, they used their hooves to dig them out. So much for that project.

This year Vermont has had rain more than half the summer days and the grounds are flooded. Many community agriculture projects are not able to produce sufficient food and I have heard of garlic producers pulling garlic already to save it from rot.At this point we can only hope to salvage what we can.

Hope your gardens are doing well and the sun is shinning for you.

George Africa
Vermont Flower farm
The Vermont Gardener

------George,
good to hear from you. We've had lots of rain here this summer as well, though no flooding in the London area. The sun is out after a night of rain and I'm hoping for some heat to ripen all those tomato fruits which are still as green as a Vermont pasture!

[Patrick]

Storage life isn't as simple as hard or softneck.

For example artichoke (soft) varieties usually have a shorter life than most, but silverskins (also soft) often have a very long storage life.

Even though it's not one of the most interesting, the Prim will probably last the longest as long as you don't open the bulb.

Home grown garlic in general has a longer life than what you buy, and it also depends a lot on if you dry it out properly. I've never tried it in the greenhouse before, so I'm curious how it goes...

Normally my garlic starts going bad around April, and by then I have spring garlic ready in the garden. I'm never out of garlic.

[Kim]

Nice reviews of the garlic. I found that, as Patrick mentioned, some garlic just stores longer than others even if both types are hardneck, etc.

That said, I did hedge my bets and try to eat more of my hardneck types earlier in the fall/winter, saving the softnecks for later winter and early spring before I switched to chives and onions for flavoring... until those garlic scapes were ready. (Yum. I adore garlic scapes!)