Pskem River, Pre-Busted Cloves

September/October 2022 Offering Only- around 16 pounds of my 2022 harvest of Pskem River was located in an excessively dry and hot part of my drying tunnel (top shelf of my highest tunnel on the uphill section), and lost much of their papers/skins during handling. Rather than attempt to clean them, I will be busting them apart to individual cloves, for immediate planting or kitchen processing.

Orders will be accepted from September 25th to  October 8th, and will ship on October 11th at the latest, via my usual postal service- USPS Priority Mail which makes it to most locations in the US within 2-3 days of shipping. This will be "just the nick of time" for much of North American garlic planting season, or to accompany any of you doing food preserving of your final garden harvests.

Approximate Cloves Per Pound-

I took a random sample of 1.002 kilograms of bulbs, busted them, and got 0.952 kilograms of cloves. I counted these out to about 124 cloves- which converted to Imperial math, means about 59 cloves per pound. This is a single sample and all orders will have some variation. This is approximately 7.6 grams per clove but keep in mind, Pskem River has a wide range of cloves from its habit of forming dominant cloves, runt cloves, etc. If you intend to plant larger cloves only, you will have to "over-order," and do the sorting yourself! At my prices, this is still a big bargain on other websites' seed garlic prices.

Variety Description

Found at many Northeast festivals and farmer's markets, Pskem River is a prime example of the quality that can be found from wild garlic being grown commercially and in gardens. Raw heat, with amazing flavor roasted or sauteed as well. Bulbs typically make 3 or 4 cloves but can go up to 6, and they're rarely symmetrical- usually 1 or 2 distinctly large cloves and a runt or two.

Collected in the wild from the Pskem River valley in Uzbekistan, its genetics are probably not far from the earliest domesticated garlic. Sometimes lumped in with the Purple Stripe category. In the Northeast, it tends to sprout after the Porcelains but before much else, and usually matures earlier than most other Hardnecks. First to go to scape, too. If you want to enjoy seeing what a half-domesticated garlic might grow like, this is it. With good fertility it’ll show some purple in the skin but not quite like a true Purple Stripe usually would.

Click here to see the only other current offering, of Shandong Purple cloves