West Cork Garlic

West Cork Garlic


Great to meet up with Axel and Marye Miret, the people who run West Cork Garlic, at their stall in the Kinsale Farmers Market last Wednesday. They were excited at a recent successful crop but even more excited about next year when thousands and thousands of bulbs will be planted

While they are relatively new to the commercial side of garlic growing, they have for many years been growing garlic successfully in their kitchen garden and soon became as the “Garlic People”. Now their garlic is used in some restaurants and for sale in shops such as URRU in Bandon and in On The Pig’s Back in Douglas. They also sell some handy garlic tools at their market stall and, if you want to sample the garlic itself  in the city centre, check it out at Bradley’s, North Main Street, where I first came across it last Tuesday.

Not alone do they sell garlic but they can also sell you the material to grow your own and are quite happy to dispense advice on how to get the best out if it. “We will be more than happy to share our experience and passion and provide you with all you need to for a successful home crop.”

You can meet them all over West Cork at the Markets: Kinsale (Wednesday), Dunmanway (Thursday), Clonakilty (Friday), Skibbereen (Saturday) and Enniskeane (one Saturday per month). You may also like to look at their website.

If you want to get sowing yourself, you don’t have that much time. Well, don’t wait until the spring as most garlic is planted in late autumn and early winter, some varieties as early as September!

So let us wish the enterprising couple all the best with their big planting next season. They are doing us all a favour. “West Cork Garlic, a welcome home-grown alternative to the Chinese garlic flooding the country,” according to Darina Allen. Import substitution is the name of the game here and we can all play a part, by buying from the Mirets or by planting up a patch in the back garden.