Spanish Roja

Ben Ronniger Last updated on Jul 15, 2024 by

Harvests early-mid summer - stores through fall into winter

Rocamboles grow better in cold winter gardens.

Spanish Roja, an heirloom garlic, (a garden plant whose lineage can be traced for a 100 years or more) came to the Portland, Oregon area over a hundred years ago and was originally known as Greek or Greek Blue garlic. It is a generally a vigorous grower with large foliage that is dark green and results in a pretty good sized bulb. Being a Rocambole garlic, its flavor is very strong, hot and spicy and sticks around for a long time. It seems to have an especially rich taste. From a growers perspective, it grows well in cold winter areas, but does poorly in warm winter areas, and usually grows healthy fairly uniform sized bulbs. It has thin bulb wrappers that have a lot of purple and brown in them.

I have a hard time deciding which garlic should be ranked where, but Spanish Roja is certainly up there in pungencyand I will just have to continue eating as many different ones as I can in an effort to improve. When I die, don't bother to bury me in a box, just plant in the fall and water me, I'll probably sprout and grow.

Spanish Roja usually has anywhere from 8 or 9 easy to peel cloves that are of good size, with no smaller inner cloves. The outer bulb wrappers are thin and flake off easily so it is not a very good storer, but no Rocambole is. Great taste is their claim to fame, not long storage. For those up North who want to grow their own garlic it only takes a year or two to grow all you can eat. It harvests in mid-season along with most of the other Rocamboles. Bulbs are usually over 2 1/2 inches in diameter and are of good size are grown primarily for their particularly rich flavor.

Spanish Roja Garlic


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