I Love Produce, headquartered in West Grove, PA, is the first Garlic Grower with New Crop California Garlic available from the 2011 crop. “We actually had new crop garlic available from California before Mexico had white garlic available in the market for the first time I can remember said Jim Provost, President of I Love Produce. “Traditionally the U.S. market has needed garlic from Mexico to bridge the gap to July when new crop California is typically available, but through some innovative seed techniques, we have shrunk that window”.
I Love Produce is using a white hard-neck seed variety that is new to California, but has been grown widely in Mexico and Argentina. The garlic is typically white, like the California early and late soft-neck varieties, but has a clove structure of a hard-neck. Hard-neck Varieties have a uniform clove formation around a center stem. The attached photo shows the new 2011 crop hard-neck garlic from California compared to soft-neck late California garlic from storage 2010 crop. You can see the clove structure is different, as is the germination level of the garlic out of storage.
“This is our third-year growing this variety in California” explained Provost. Results the first year were not great, but we learned a good deal. With the lessons we learned, we are turning out a beautiful bulb of garlic now.”
I Love Produce markets garlic, ginger, shallots and other specialty produce nation-wide.
The company’s roots were established importing garlic and other products from China and are now growing garlic in California as well as shipping California grapes and citrus and Washington States apples and cherries to mainland China.
Source: I Love Produce
