Garlic growing on the Isle of Wight

Did you know that garlic has long been used in the central Asian republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan as a folk medicine to treat ailments as varied as scurvy and anaemia?

Or that this ‘stinky rose’ of vampire-thwarting fame is a natural antiseptic, a powerful antioxidant and an insect repellent?

Colin Boswell certainly does, and much more besides, for he has studied, cultivated and been an unofficial ambassador for this long-used and highly beneficial plant for more than 30 years.

He also came up with the idea of an annual festival to celebrate anything and everything to do with this fascinating plant.

Colin has even been on a ‘pilgrimage’ to Kazakhstan and eastern Turkey in a personal quest to find the original wild garlics.

Considered to be the UK’s – perhaps even Europe’s - leading expert on garlic, Colin’s association with garlic began in the 1970s in his mother Norah’s vegetable patch on the Isle of Wight.

“The hot summers of ‘75 and ‘76 effortlessly produced quality garlic, bright and white.”

The couple’s business flourished. In fact, the demand for garlic was so great they had to supplement their own produce with imported supplies. At the end of the 90s, however, everything went pear-shaped following a major health and safety problem - not with garlic but with sweetcorn, which they also grew.

Slowly, but surely, Colin and Jenny got back on their feet. Today, they are once again the UK’s premier specialist growers of garlic, selling around 100 tons of bulbs annually.

The couple’s outlets are their farm shop and website, the two-day annual Isle of Wight Garlic Festival, other farm shops, as well as delicatessens and farmers’ markets, certain stores and amateur gardeners.

Although Colin and Jenny have been involved with the garlic business for more than 30 years, “perhaps the most significant growth has been in the last five years” as a result of the public’s growing awareness of whole and natural foods and the so-called ‘foodie revolution’.

The multi-award winning Garlic Farm has long enjoyed a high public profile. It’s been featured on TV, “most famously in the Rick Stein series, Food Heroes. But by far our favourite is James Martin, whose enthusiasm for our garlic passion comes across loud and clear in his series, Delicious, when he visited the farm.”

The Garlic Farm’s shop sells not only garlic bulbs but also a wide range of garlic products - everything, in fact, from ‘seriously spicy sauces’ for ‘fiery feasts’, such as the wittily named Who Dares Burns, Head Hunter and Ultimate Insanity, and Transylvanian pickled garlic (an original recipe from Transylvania claimed to keep vampires past and present away), to  Vampire Relish (‘hot and spicy, bloody good’), Vampires’ Delight (‘get your fangs into this sweet and succulent garlic and apple chutney’), Vampire Extreme (a plum, garlic and habanero chilli relish) to apple and oak-smoked garlic butter and organic garlic mayonnaise.

A highly successful spin-off from the garlic-growing enterprise has been the Isle of Wight Garlic Festival, held every August to celebrate the garlic harvest. A firm fixture on the Isle of Wight’s calendar of summer events, the festival attracts tens of thousands of visitors from all over the island and well beyond. It was Colin who came up with the idea for a festival in the early 80s.

Colin has undertaken considerable research over the years into the history and use of use garlic – one of the world’s oldest known crops. There are Egyptian and Indian references to it 5,000 years ago and “clear historical evidence” for its use by the Babylonians 4,500 years ago and by the Chinese 2,000 years ago.

The oldest visible evidence of garlic’s existence is to be found in burial chambers in El Mahasna, Egypt. Clay sculptures of garlic bulbs dating back to 3700 BC were found in one tomb and paintings of garlic dating back to 3200 BC in another.

Today, the original wild garlics grow naturally only in central Asia (centred on Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan).

Colin’s passion for all things garlic continues unabated, as does the British love affair for garlic-seasoned food.

“The one thing you do notice now is that people smell less of garlic. Garlic doesn’t hang on people’s breath because their ability to metabolise garlic has improved. There are, however, some people who can’t metabolise garlic and react badly to it.”

When garlic is bruised, a mould grows over the damaged area. “Garlic itself is an antiseptic and the mould is an antibiotic.”

Garlic is not just a highly successful business for Colin Boswell. It is also an endless source of fascination.