Allium sativum
Origin: Carpathian Mountains (Southeast Poland), via Apalachin, NY
Improvement status: Cultivar
Life cycle: Perennial (grown as a biennial)
Weight and price options:
1/2 pound: $16
1 pound: $29
We are thrilled to be offering this extra-special garlic after nearly a decade of pining for it! Carpathian is itself a relatively uncommon garlic variety, and this localized family strain is even less common. But with its enormous cloves, excellent spicy flavor, and easy-to-peel purple-and-tan skin, we know it will be super popular!
Originating in the Carpathian Mountains of southeastern Poland, this strain has been stewarded for 35 years by our dear friend Lisa Bloodnick of Bloodnick Family Farm in Apalachin, NY (outside Binghamton). You may recognize Lisa's name from this catalogue, as she's the original breeder of the beloved 'Sacre Bleu' beans.
Since Nate first visited Lisa's farm and was introduced to her garlic (see last photo here, from 2018), we've wanted to carry it here. But Lisa is an old-school market farmer — still plows her field with the help of a horse! — and she's always prioritized her customers at the farmers market, so we never had the opportunity to offer it. Thankfully, Lisa inspired the next generation of her family to get into agriculture, and now her daughter-in-law Meagan Wright and son Brendan Bloodnick grow this incredible Carpathian garlic at their beautiful Cedar Gorge Farm in Lodi, New York. They are our source for these bulbs — making them EFN's first second-generation growers!
With its huge cloves, this variety averages around 40 cloves per pound (typical varieties are more in the 60 to 80 cloves-per-pound range), and each clove — at least if planted before mid-November in most of the US — will transform into a big beautiful bulb by the following late spring or early summer. The relatively loose skins prevent Carpathian from being a long keeper (4 or 5 months is typical), but they certainly make it easier to use in the kitchen. When grown well, with nice rich soil and weeds kept under control, this beefy variety also produces loads of hefty and delicious garlic scapes each spring too.
Supplies are limited, so get your order in today!
NOTE: While it's not exactly standard practice to add someone's name to an existing variety, as we've done here (and as Meagan and Brendan do), we believe in this case that it's justified. Though garlic is a clonally propagated crop, we're still learning about how mutations and possible epigenetic changes happen over time as garlic is planted and re-planted. Lisa has put decades of work into this strain, saving only the biggest bulbs for planting the following season, and the results truly speak for themselves. We've seen Carpathian at various farmers markets through the years, and sometimes their biggest bulbs are half the size of Lisa's average!
