Purple Stripe Varieties

The garlic for sale on this page belongs to three related hardneck garlic varieties. Purple Stripe, Marbled Purple Stripe and Glazed Purple Stripe are now classified as three distinct varieties of true hardneck varieties of the sub-species Allium sativum ophioscorodon. Standard Purple Stripes have beautiful, elegant bulbs with vividly coloured wrappers and tall, slender cloves. Chesnok Red and Persian Star are classic examples of the Purple Stripe variety. They have 8 to 12 cloves per bulb, are easy to grow, and keep well. If the scapes are left on the plants they produce bulbils that are intermediate in number to the Rocamboles and Porcelains and are a mixture of medium and small bulbils.

Both Marbled Purple Stripe and Glazed Purple Stripe garlics have fewer, fatter cloves than garlics of the standard Purple Stripe variety. Marbled Purple Stripes have good potential as commercial garlics. Glazed Purple Stripes have delicate wrappers, requiring careful handling and timely harvesting.

Some of the garlic came to us unclassified and we have made our best guess as to the variety.

Quantity and Price

The price is $3.50 Canadian per bulb when you order 5 or more bulbs of a strain (a named garlic or cultivar) and $4.00 per bulb when you order 1 to 4 bulbs of a strain. If you order more than the allowable maximum number of bulbs, the shopping cart will show a price of $0.00 to indicate that is an invalid order.

Since we have more than 150 strains of garlic planted in a little over an acre there are many garlics for which we only have a small number of bulbs to sell. For each strain we have set a maximum number of bulbs per order so that the garlics are shared fairly.

It is a lot of extra work keeping track of a few bulbs each of so many different garlics. The higher price for small quantities reflects the extra work of being a “seed saver” for garlic and sharing this rich diversity with Canadian collectors, gardeners and farmers.

Customers from the United States and abroad are reminded that Boundary Garlic only exports bulbils. Please enquire for details.