I’ve been growing garlic since 1975. When I first started farming, I didn’t have
the ability to do a “google search” to find an answer to a farming question or
learn about how to grow different vegetables.
I had to search for my own answers.
So when it came to growing garlic, I tapped another farmer on the
shoulder to try to learn more about it.
That farmer was Dave Frattalone, an experienced grower who sold vegetables
at the St. Paul farmers’ market. At the
time, Dave was planting a soft neck garlic variety in the spring. His yield was slim and the bulbs were small,
but he had the monopoly on that market because no one else knew how to grow
garlic any better! When I asked Dave for
some garlic education, he made it very clear to me that I was on my own to
figure this one out. So, I did my own
research and found a grower in Canada who was growing a hard neck type of
garlic that he planted in the fall. So I
bought some hard neck garlic seed, planted it in the fall, and the following
summer I brought some beautiful garlic bulbs to market to show Dave
Frattalone. While he didn’t say it in
words, I could tell that I had earned Dave’s respect with this garlic. He asked me how I had grown such big,
beautiful garlic and I willingly shared the secret with him….plant it in the
fall! This was an important moment in my
farming career. I still had a lot to
learn about other vegetables and Dave was one of the old-timers that knew a lot
of the information I needed to learn, such as when to plant cauliflower for fall
harvest. Garlic was the key to open the
door to this wealth of experience and knowledge.
 |
| The crew cracking garlic last fall for planting |
While I did buy seed stock in my early years, I quickly
learned that garlic seed sold as “disease free” was rarely ever really disease
free.
Fusarium basal rot is a common
disease in garlic. Garlic “seed” is
actually the cloves on a bulb of garlic.
If you have disease on the bulb, you will likely spread the disease from
one year into the next. In an effort to
prevent
fusarium basal rot in my garlic, I decided it might be a better idea to
raise our own seed stock. So for the
past 30 years we’ve maintained our own seed for two major varieties of hard
neck garlic and every year we take the best, biggest, nicest garlic bulbs and
plant them for the next year’s crop.
Garlic is not a crop we grow for the wholesale market. Gilroy, California used to be the “Garlic
Capitol of the World,” but now most of the garlic is produced in China and
South America, organic included.
Unfortunately the price you can get for garlic is pretty cheap, but the
cost to produce garlic is high.
Nonetheless, we still consider garlic to be an important part of our CSA
season as well as our own diets! So we
continue to grow garlic and after all these years, I’m still learning how to
grow the best garlic!
 |
| 2016 Fall planting |
 |
| Mulched garlic field ready for the winter! |
This year’s crop was planted last October. The bulbs were cracked and the individual
cloves were separated. The nice, big
cloves that came off of good quality bulbs were set aside to plant for
full-sized garlic. If there were any small cloves on a bulb, those cloves were
saved to be planted as green garlic.
It’s important for the garlic roots to become well-established before
the ground freezes for the winter. The
mulch is important to the survival of garlic over the winter because it
protects the garlic from extreme temperature changes and excessive freezing and
thawing. However, you have to get the
mulch off the garlic in the spring so the new growth can push through! Unfortunately, our field crew hadn’t arrived
yet when this needed to be done this spring.
As soon as they arrived, one of the first missions they had was to pull
back some of the tight-packed mulch. As
a result, we may have lost a few plants that just couldn’t push through the
mulch. But that’s the life of farming,
there are no guarantees. The remaining
plants looked really good and have produced some very nice garlic this year!
This year we tried a new method for watering the
garlic. We buried drip tape in the beds
so we could easily irrigate and had a means of delivering nutrients through the
drip lines at some critical stages of their growth. After all the garlic scapes were removed from
the plants, we watched them closely for signs of maturity and watched the
weather closely because, even though we stopped irrigating weeks ago, a heavy
rain could make harvest difficult and increase the potential for disease.
I often use the phrase “
it all depends on the weather.”
Well, garlic harvest is no different and it is always dependent on the
weather. I’ve been closely watching the
garlic as it matures over the past few weeks, while also keeping close watch on
the weather forecast. We deemed this
week as the major push to harvest our 1.5 acre field of garlic. This is no small task and requires a
significant amount of crew and time to complete the harvest. We still have to keep up with our regular
harvest schedule while trying to tackle the garlic, so it has proven to be an
“All Hands On Deck” kind of week! To add
an element of urgency, they were predicting rain and thunderstorms to move into
the area Tuesday night with predictions of over one inch of rainfall. Yikes!
That could ruin a garlic crop overnight!
 |
| Garlic in the greenhouse starting to dry. |
So we have been running full throttle since the beginning of
the day on Monday and anyone who was available to help with the harvest has
joined the fun. We made pretty good progress
in two days and estimated that we’d have about 75% of the crop harvested by the
end of the work day on Tuesday. I asked
some field crew members to go to the garlic field after their harvest was
complete on Tuesday evening. We needed
help picking up the garlic that had already been dug. I only intended for them to help get things
picked up. I didn’t anticipate that they
decided that they were so close to being finished, we might as well work
late, dig the remainder and be done for the year! We worked until after 8 pm, but at the end of
the night every piece of garlic was in the greenhouse. I must say, it was a good way to end the day
and I feel very blessed to be able to work with such a loyal, dedicated, “get
the job done” kind of a crew. They did
it…and Tuesday night the weather forecast came true. We got 1.5 inches of rain overnight. Good job guys. Job well done.
 |
| Final harvest sheet records for garlic this year! |
I’ve been growing garlic since 1975. When I first started farming, I didn’t have
the ability to do a “google search” to find an answer to a farming question or
learn about how to grow different vegetables.
I had to search for my own answers.
So when it came to growing garlic, I tapped another farmer on the
shoulder to try to learn more about it.
That farmer was Dave Frattalone, an experienced grower who sold vegetables
at the St. Paul farmers’ market. At the
time, Dave was planting a soft neck garlic variety in the spring. His yield was slim and the bulbs were small,
but he had the monopoly on that market because no one else knew how to grow
garlic any better! When I asked Dave for
some garlic education, he made it very clear to me that I was on my own to
figure this one out. So, I did my own
research and found a grower in Canada who was growing a hard neck type of
garlic that he planted in the fall. So I
bought some hard neck garlic seed, planted it in the fall, and the following
summer I brought some beautiful garlic bulbs to market to show Dave
Frattalone. While he didn’t say it in
words, I could tell that I had earned Dave’s respect with this garlic. He asked me how I had grown such big,
beautiful garlic and I willingly shared the secret with him….plant it in the
fall! This was an important moment in my
farming career. I still had a lot to
learn about other vegetables and Dave was one of the old-timers that knew a lot
of the information I needed to learn, such as when to plant cauliflower for fall
harvest. Garlic was the key to open the
door to this wealth of experience and knowledge.
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