Bungonia Creek - Garlic
2024 season:-
3 Apr 2024 - We have sold out of our Monaro Purple garlic apart for a few kgs of small bulbs (less than 30gms). We still have a reasonable quantity of Italian White garlic for sale. We are planning to sell it at the Exeter Market on 6th April.
8 Feb 2024 - We have a limited quantity of Italian White garlic for sale. It tastes great but the outer skin is a little wrinkled.
2 Dec 2023 - We have completed our garlic harvest for the season and have lots of great Monaro Purple cured and ready for sale. The Italian White needs a couple of weeks to finish curing so will not be available for sale until after Christmas.
5 Nov 2023 - We have just commenced harvesting the new seasons garlic. It is slightly early this year due to the dry spring. We will be curing the garlic for 3-4 weeks before it is available for sale at the end of November.
Orders can now be placed for our Monaro Purple garlic but no orders will be shipped until the end of November when the garlic will have cured.
We have grown some Italian White this year but it not quite ready for harvest so we are not showing it as available for sale.
Australian grown garlic
Buy premium quality Australian garlic, which has a good rich garlic flavor - hot raw but milder and nuttier when roasted. If you are at all concerned about buying cheaper imported Chinese garlic see Graeme Sait's comments at the bottom of this page. We grow our garlic in some of the spare rows we have in the vineyard
Our rich basalt soil and cool crisp winters are perfect for growing dense, full-flavoured, sweet garlic. We hand plant and harvest our garlic, and grow it according to organic and biodynamic principles. We prepare the soil with organic and mineral soil conditioners, and biodynamic preparations in summer, and sow our garlic during March and April. We nurture the garlic all winter, keeping it mulched, watered, and weeded, before harvesting in November and December.
The harvested garlic is hung in the shed to air-dry, which is when it develops its best flavor profile. Each bulb contains between 10 and 12 cloves, regardless of the size of the bulb, so the bigger the bulb, the bigger the clove. Ideal for garlic lovers… Our bulbs usually weigh between 40-100grams.
Our garlic is only available in season, so get your orders in now.
You can buy your garlic via our CATALOGUE (SHOP). Garlic stores well in a dry position out of the sun. It should not be refrigerated. Storage times for our garlic are as follows:-
- Our Monaro Purple garlic will keep until March/April.
- Our white garlic will keep until April.
Should you wish to have Australian Garlic all year round, the answer is to buy about 8 months supply in March and break it into individual cloves and then freeze it. When you want to use it, unfreeze the cloves you need. They will be a little softer that when fresh but they will have all the taste and goodness of the original.
Monaro Purple
Monaro Purple is probably derived from an Italian Purple variety and reportedly first appeared in the Snowy Mountains around 80 years ago when the workers on the Snowy Hydro Scheme brought the garlic out from Europe. The name Monaro comes from the Monaro region of Southern NSW. There are many other locally named varieties of "Italian Purple" grown in Australia that may all originate from the same source.
Italian White
Italian White is a mild flavored garlic. It has a white skin, often with purple blotching or striping especially in cooler climates. It has a slightly longer shelf life (5 months) than the purples. Being a soft neck garlic it is easier to braid and we offer this variety braided.
Shipping.
Due to quarantine regulations we can only ship to NSW, ACT, VIC and QLD.
Delivery is made by Australia Post.
We only send orders on Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday to ensure that your garlic does not sit in the depot over the weekend.
The abomination of a superfood by Graeme Sait
Last year I was a guest speaker at two southern garlic conferences and I was able to socialise with the entrepreneurial and entertaining souls whom have chosen to grow garlic. I wondered how a local industry could survive when prices are four times that of imported Chinese garlic, so I researched the imported option. My goodness, this garbage will never grace my dinner table again. It is the classic bastardisation of a wonderful food! Here are some details of the toxic quartet involved in the cheap import:
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First, the garlic is soaked in bleach to produce an unnatural, pristine look. The intent is to suggest purity, but bleach is a dioxin. Dioxins are fat soluble, class one carcinogens and they should not even be in your laundry, let alone on your food.
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Then, the unfortunate functional food is dowsed with maleic acid to prevent premature sprouting. In continuation of the cancer theme, this additive is a proven class 3 carcinogen and can also create serious kidney damage.
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The third indignity bestowed upon this medicinal bulb involves irradiation to extend shelf-life. The major powerhouse medicinal component of garlic is called allicin. It can lower blood pressure, while reducing inflammation and boosting immunity. The enzyme alliinase converts alliin to allicin. Ideally, cloves should be bruised a little and then left to stand for 11 minutes to allow the formation of allicin before consumption. It is important to understand that irradiation neutralises all enzymes. This effectively means that there is no chance for allicin to form. It might look like garlic and you can still smell the sulfur component, but it is no longer the protective, defense food it was designed to be.
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Finally, the highly compromised cloves arrive on Australian shores and are subjected to a particularly nasty local ritual. Imported fresh food is soaked in methyl bromide to ensure that we are not importing any unwanted intruders into our country. This chemical was widely used as a soil treatment to kill nematodes and destroy weed seeds. It has been banned in most counties due to the extreme toxicity and damage to the ozone layer. All other counties that employ this toxic intervention insist upon a withholding period before the treated food hits the consumer. Australia and New Zealand are the only two countries that have not agreed to this withholding period.
Perhaps you now understand why you might pay an extra premium for organic or biological garlic, produced in our country, rather than this imported abomination.