GOURMET GARLIC SHOP

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Welcome to our on-line garlic shop…

Join our newsletter mailing list to be notified when our new harvest of delectable garlic is ready for purchase each season.

The online GARLIC SHOP is NOW CLOSED. Our garlic bulbs are SOLD OUT for this season. The 2012 crop has been planted and is due Dec. 2012. 

You really do have to get in quick each year, as our online garlic goes fast!

N.B.: we DO NOT 

take wholesale orders AND DO NOT supply bulk of wholesale-priced 'seed' or

planting stock garlic (no exceptions): we are simply not a large enough farm for wholesale or to accommodate commercial planting stock orders. Our focus is to grow premium quality, gourmet garlic for direct sale as food to home cooks and professional chefs.  

Join our newsletter to be notified when our harvest is approaching and our delectable garlic is ready for your purchase each annual season.

Growing garlic has been a great move for us and one of our best farm choices. We’re very proud of our garlic and delight in being able to share with you this product, grown lovingly and naturally with integrity. We are thrilled with the splendid feedback we have received from so many customers. We are also honoured to have been finalists for the 2011 ABC delicious Produce Awards and for winning a Gold Medal for our garlic in the 2010 ABC delicious Produce Awards. THANK YOU!

Our Garlic

Our gorgeous gourmet garlic owes its piquant and rich depth of flavour to being grown under ideal climatic conditions with our long, cold, wet winters here in the Central Victorian Highlands. The fertile, red volcanic soils of Angelica Organic Farm and our ardently employed biological growing methods further guarantee the quality and heartiness of our garlic. Angelica Organic Farm garlic is produced almost entirely by hand – planted, mulched, weeded, harvested, cured, trimmed, cleaned, plaited and packed by hand. The best quality control from 'seed' to sale!

The 2009, 2010 and 2011 crops were a red rocambole variety, a hard-necked purple, early season type. Rocamboles are renowned for their excellent, strong flavour, glamorous red-purple skins and single circle of 6-12 plump cloves

Our focus is to grow premium quality, gourmet garlic for direct sale as food to home cooks and chefs. We are NOT commercial planting stock growers/suppliers or set up to do so.

You can grow from our garlic in your home garden (the garlic is naturally 'fertile') but we do not provide especially selected garlic orders/clove size for that purpose. Please note also, that we are NOT able to supply bulk quantities of or wholesale-priced 'seed' or planting garlic stock - we are simply not a large enough farm. If you do decide to have a go growing your own with some of our garlic, you will find our prices competitive with if not cheaper than many seed suppliers anyway, you just won't be getting especially size-selected bulbs/cloves from us. In Victoria and other cold regions, plant your garlic by April.

Join our mailing list to be notified when our harvest is approaching and our delectable garlic is ready for your purchase each annual season. 

We chose garlic as a major crop because we adore it and along with many other folk we've met, believe it to be a must-have basic ingredient within a fulfilled culinary life!

The Pretenders…Imported garlic dangers…

There has been quite a bit of coverage on the issue of inferior and toxin laden imported garlic over recent years for good reason. Ethical consumerism, fair trade and 'clean', healthy food are serious considerations. We have to ask ‘how our food is grown, at what price and WHO paid the REAL price?’ 

Australia imports at least 90% of the garlic on store shelves from China and a certain amount from Argentina and Mexico too. This ‘flood’ of cheap garlic began a bit over a decade ago and effectively destroyed our local garlic growing sector.

Growing garlic commercially is a labour intensive business, particularly when grown without using pesticides, fungicides and herbicides. So, China has become our largest supplier by forcing down its price through cheap labour, harsh working conditions and substandard farming practises. We need to understand the difference between value and sustainability and their relationship to price.

The bright white flawless looking Chinese garlic is bleached with chlorine. Most concerning is that Chinese garlic is still being grown using chemicals banned in Australia long ago and it is reported that raw human sewage has be used as fertiliser. To be able to allow it into our country, the quarentine department, AQIS, fumigates every single bulb with methyl bromide, one of the world's most dangerous chemicals for human and environmental health. It is kept in cold storage and is often too old by the time it reaches our shelves, which is why it’s sprouting or spongy when you get it. It is also usually treated with growth retardant to prevent the sprouting. All of these applications denature the flavour, freshness and goodness of the garlic leaving you with a pitiful tasting pretender, loaded with toxic residues!

Whether you're looking for flavour or health benefits from your garlic, the key is 'freshness' or rather well cured and stored garlic, used within its proper season (gen. summer-autumn but into winter with some late white varieties). Once the clove has begun seriously sprouting, much of the sulphurous energy has gone into producing the shoot and the clove has lost most of its potency, but you can still use sprouted quality garlic until it starts to get too old, becoming spongy.