I ordered a garlic sampler a few years back, and loved having a wide range of 8 different flavors to choose from. Some were milder, sweeter varieties, and others were pretty hot and pungent. My husband and kids seemed to prefer the hotter ones. I'll have to go back and look to see what the purple striped variety was, as they loved the flavor, and it also stored the longest of any we grew.
I did find a big difference in storage times between the softneck and hardneck varieties. We've learned to use the softneck ones first, as they seem to shrivel and dry up to nothing after a few months. The hardneck varieties keep longer. I harvest them, lay them out on cardboard in a shady location for a week or two, and then store them in wire baskets in my basement (generally 65 degrees or so.)
Last year I waited far too long to harvest, as our vacation hit at just the wrong time, and many of the leaves were entirely gone. The papery husk had disintegrated underground, and as I dug them up, I found loose, individual cloves, rather than heads of garlic. I usually reserve the biggest cloves for replanting in the fall, and let that slip this year, too. Mid-winter, I was sad as I considered that I would have no fresh garlic this summer, when we are used to having a bountiful harvest. I was surprised this spring to find my garlic bed full of garlic sprouts. Apparently I missed a surprising number of loose cloves when I dug them up, and they've sprouted on their own. I no longer have any idea which varieties are which, but I'm so happy to see all those green spears, I don't even care!
