No vampires here: Garlic 101.
/I’m declaring 2019 the year of the garlic around here. This is definitely not something we’ve grown before, but in Tyler’s true entrepreneurial spirit, we’ve jumped in with both feet. And by both feet I mean from ZERO garlic plants to approximately 18,000 garlic plants…
Seriously, pray for us because we have lost our minds.
Tyler has been interested in growing garlic for a while, so started doing some research. The Google machine led him to this book which has turned out to be the Bible for garlic growers. (Note that I read zero pages of this book because between a full time job and reading actual interesting books, no thanks on the garlic book).
Now I consider myself a pretty serious garlic lover. Basically, if a recipe calls for 2 cloves of garlic, I add 4 (ok fine…sometimes 6). I’m also not a jar garlic kind of girl and only recently bought a jar for the first time because a recipe specfically called for it. Never again. I also will never again make chicken in my Instant Pot. But that is a whole different rant.
Long story short, even though I am a huge fresh garlic fan, I clearly knew nothing about it.
In case you ever find yourself in a trivia contest on the topic of garlic, here’s some of what I’ve learned recently:
There are basically two main types of garlic - hard neck and soft neck. While there are many varieties of both hard neck and soft neck, these are the two main categories.
Most of what you see in the grocery store would be a soft neck variety. These have your typical garlic taste and produce a good number of cloves. They have the white papery look to them.
The hard neck variety is apparently where it’s at if you’re a real garlic lover! It has a harder stem/stalk in the center and has a spicier flavor. They also tend to be a little pink/purplish in color.
Also…when you plant garlic, you break apart every clove and plant each clove individually. So we didn’t start with a seed. We started by breaking apart 200 lbs of garlic into individual cloves. Then planted each clove individually…right side up…in the dark…with headlamps…in October… when it was unusually cold. I’ve never been so thankful to have a job where I’m required to travel! (Kidding…kind of).
We planted a combination of California Early (a soft neck variety) as well as Music (a hard neck variety). Since we started our crop by planting cloves, I had the opportunity to cook with both types before we planted them (because lord knows we had enough to spare with 18,000 cloves planted!). I will say that although both were excellent, I am a HUGE FAN of the Music. I used it in my white chicken chili, which I make all the time. Tyler kept asking me what I did different because it was a little spicier. I think I told him at least 3 or 4 times that it was the same as always until it hit me that it was the garlic! I’m telling y’all the flavor was so good! I can’t wait for it to be ready!
After a lot of man hours breaking apart the bulbs into individual cloves, each clove was planted about 6 inches apart in raised beds. Luckily, we got most of the cloves in the ground just before a huge rain. About a week after we planted them, we had shoots that looked like this:
Garlic 11.6.18
The guys covered up the beds with wheat straw (which I called “putting the garlic to bed for the winter”) but will help control weeds come Spring.
We are about 75 days in on the garlic as of now. We took some pictures this weekend and checked on it’s progress. We’re first timers but one of our specialty crop reps looked at it and said it’s looking great!
Garlic 1.12.19
Garlic 1.12.19
From planting to harvesting should take approximately 228 days which (weather depending) would be right around mid June. Of course a warm spring could accelerate that or a late cold snap could push it back a little.
I’ll try to be better about posting the garlic progress over the winter. We have grain bins getting moved, a high tunnel going up, and lots of seeds and plants being ordered this week. There’s a lot happening to get ready for this season and we’re excited for whats to come!
But seriously…send prayers (and wine) in mid June. Because I have a feeling that harvesting 18,000 garlic bulbs while combining wheat and picking tomatoes is going to be no joke!