Spring growth on the Saanich Peninsula!
Where is the garlic Grown?
All the garlic is locally grown on the Saanich Peninsula, on Vancouver Island, BC!
What’s the difference between the families of Garlic?
Every family of garlic has a particular quality that brings an exciting array of variety to flavour, storage life, spiciness, terroir, aroma, look, and growth pattern. The families that we cultivate at West Coast Garlic are:
Turban, Rocambole, Porcelain, Creole, Artichoke, Purple Stripe, Marbled Purple Stripe, Glazed Purple Stripe, Silverskin, Asiatic, Unclassified, and Middle Eastern.
Mature Plants
How many strains do you grow?
We grow up to 170 strains each year! There are over 600 strains out of 12 varieties of garlic worldwide, many of which originated from the Middle East, Northern Africa, and Oriental Asia.
Market stand set up
Garlic Bulbs
Where can I find your garlic in person?
The West Coast Garlic stand has a rotating selection of strains at the Saturday Moss Street Market, Wednesday Oaklands Sunset Market, and the Thursday Esquimalt Market.
WHAT IS the difference between seed garlic and culinary garlic?
Seed garlic is selected for larger bulbs and higher clove counts in order to optimize the planting process. Seed garlic is testing for white garlic rot, ensuring high quality bulbs. Because planting season starts in October every year, it is best to purchase seed garlic in the fall.
Culinary garlic is selected for healthy looking bulbs, where size and number of cloves can range widely. Depending on the strain of garlic, flavour and storage life varies.
There is no difference in flavour between the two types of garlic, but rather, they are separated for different uses.
What are the edible parts of a garlic plant?
Most commonly, the garlic bulb is eaten, either raw, cooked, or dried and powdered. The scape of the garlic plant, is the green flower stem, that is harvested in late spring, and eaten cooked or pickled. The bulbil, or flowering seed bulb, found at the top of the scape if left to bloom, could also be eaten. As the bulbils are the seeds of cloves of garlic, they taste like a milder version of the cloves.
What is black garlic?
‘Black Garlic’ is a method of preserving garlic cloves, involving a carefully monitored aging process over weeks or even months. It produces a sticky, molasses-like textured clove that softens in garlic flavour intensity, but is found to increase certain medicinal qualities. Can be swapped for regular garlic in many recipes.