California Early

Ben Ronniger Last updated on Jul 15, 2024 by

Harvests early summer - stores into winter

This one of the two Gilroy cultivars that have become popular and is processed into dried and pickled and otherwise processed garlic products. California Early is a little bigger and sweeter than California Late, which is definitely on the hot side. Cal Early is early maturing and is a prolific grower and a good commercial garlic. It does seem to tolerate hot spring weather well and stores well also.

Cal Early is an excellent all- around general use garlic and a wonderful baker.

It ranks 4-5 on the garlickiness scale and 3-4 on the pungency side. It has a semi-rich flavor and a little bite, but is still on the light side.

It's a very good growers garlic as it has many large cloves (even the innermost cloves are of good size) and it stores well under proper conditions. The Gilroy growers knew good garlic when they saw it.

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