Garlic

There are two subspecies of garlic: hardneck and softneck.

Softnecks are the types usually found in grocery stores, with many, smaller cloves and milder flavors than the hardneck types.  They have had the ability to scape bred out of them so that farmers don’t have to cull the flower on thousands of acres of planted fields. They are the obvious choice for braiding due to their pliable necks.  

Hardnecks are closer to wild garlic in that they still have the ability to form scapes.  Their flavor is often more robust than the softnecks, and they have fewer, though larger, cloves.  They are also prized by chefs for the way they slip so easily from their papery skins.  Within those two sub-species there are currently known to be ten groups of varieties, and within those ten groups, there are hundreds of varieties, or cultivars.  Here is a list of the ten garlic groups, followed by a list of the garlic cultivars that I grow at Peachtree Circle Farm.