[ Our Home Page ] [ Online Catalog ] [ Garlic Overview ] [ 40 Varieties ] [ Growing Garlic ] [ Cooking with Garlic ] [ Chemistry of Garlic ] [ Garlic Pills & Oils, Etc. ] [ Health Benefits ] [ Links ] [ FAQ's ] [ How to Order ]
[ Sampler Assortments ]
[ Pickle & Preserve Garlic ]
[ Artichoke (Softneck) Garlics ]
[ Asiatic Garlics ]
[ Creole Garlics ]
[ Porcelain Garlics ]
[ Purple Stripe Garlics ]
[ Rocambole Garlics ]
[ Silverskin (Softneck) Garlics ]
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A Photo Tour of the Garlic Patch.
I thought people would like to see how a crop develops from the plowing the land through planting, growing harvest and hanging in the barn at our place.
This is just a picture story that summarizes the planting, growing and harvesting cycles of the garlic season and is not meant to be growing instructions as those are on their own page and this is meant to illustrate how we do it here. Click here to go to the Growing Tips page for more information about planting, growing and harvesting garlic.
We plant our garlic in a different place or a different garden every year. Rotating crops is important because it keeps the soil fresh, fertile and free from harmful fungi, nematodes, unwanted bacteria and other pathogens and pests. We start by plowing under whatever is currently growing in the part of the garden where we will grow garlic this season. We try to do this in June so our organic soil additives will have time to make the soil loose, fertile and easy to work with. If we don't get an early start, our fine silty soil is hard and hard to work with. We plow once to turn the sod over and again a week later to cutup and incorporate the vegetative residue into the soil and make it a little looser and again a week later to chip the residue fine and reduce the clods to loose dirt so it is easier to build our elevated beds for the garlic.
When the soil is loose and soft enough, I attach my ugly but effective homemade bed shaper to the tractor and build the basic beds. I takes several passes to get them built up a little over half way - about 2/3. Then I add the amounts of soil conditioners that are indicated by the soil test. We have our soil tested by Texas Plant and Soil Labs in Edinburg, Texas. They test with organic growing in mind, analyze the soil and make recommendations compatible with the National Organic Program. We purchase the required materials, including green sand and lava sand, humic shale, bat guano, seaweed, molasses, mushroom compost, calcium carbonate, etc., and adding our own aged manure and wood ashes from the fireplace. After the additives are laid on the beds, I usually till them into the beds with a small Mantis tiller but it got stolen and I had to use a rake and hoe. Got a new Mantis tiller this year. After the soil conditioners are integrated into the beds, I run the bed shaper over them a couple more times to get them to the right size and shape I want and then lay a heavy mulch cover of organic material such as hay, straw or mower clippings over them to keep the moisture in and and the soil soft. The beds are left alone until planting time to allow the microbes to do their job and feed the soil.
I call this method Intensive Organic growing because I fertilize only the actual growing beds intensively and plant the garlic into these rich beds to grow their best. In the harvesting process, this fertility spreads to the areas between the beds as the beds are leveled and spread around. Eventually the whole garden becomes fertilized, but the garlic gets the fertility it needs to grow large healty bulbs when and where it needs it and then the rest of the garden gets it later. Because rock dusts and minerals are used, they act like long-time slow-release fertilizers and the garden will continue to maintain fertility for years to come and fewer inputs will eventually be needed.
When it is time to plant the garlic, the planting stock bulbs are broken apart and the bulbs soaked in the baking soda and seaweed overnight to fight fungus and give them an pre-emergent energizing boost. In the meantime, we remove the mulching material only from the beds we will be planting. I run a hula hoe over the bed to undercut any weeds and rake it out to loosen the tops of the beds. This softens the soil so that the planters' fingers will not be unduly scratched as garlic is planted by bare hands while on your knees in the mulch between the beds. Once the beds are planted, we run drip irrigation T-tapes between the outer rows for irrigation, cover the holes and lay a new mulch cover, preferrably clean straw or lawn clippings and mark the beds so I know which kinds are where. Then I water heavily by hand in order to settle the mulch so it will stay in place during strong winds.
The garlic will usually emerge from the mulch cover in a couple of weeks and grow throughout the fall and winter and get big and lush in the spring and ready for harvest. If irrigation is needed, it is usually done with the drip tape system and an occasional hand spraying with the hose to give them a drink if it's dry or they are dusty. I try to take time to give them three or four foliar feedings over the fall and winter but discontinue when the bulbs begin to form in the spring. Once the bulbs begin to form in March or so, nothing but water as often as they want it. Additional fertilization at the time do nothing for the garlic and may even build leaves at the expense of bulb size.
It is in the spring as the bulbs are forming that the leaves get the biggest and then you van really tell the differenes between the garlics from the surprising differences in the color and size, shape and splay of their leaves (Artichokes' leaves are nearly horizontal while Silvershins are nearly vertical.) You might not think there would be many differences but there are and you can clearly see them as you stand in the garden but it's difficult to capture them on film. Some are big and broad and some are long and slender, some have a definite blue haze while others are even darker blue, while the artichokes are a yellower green. The silverskin garlics have the own green rainbow going as they are all different shades of green and lots of variation in leaf size. Spring is a special time as the garlics aren't the only show around. All around the perimeter of the garden and in between the beds are wildflowers of whatever kinds Mother Earth sends us this year - every year is different because the weather is different and no two are alike.
Mid to late spring is when we harvest the garlic and each cultivar will be ready in it's own time. We shut off water to a given cultivar as it nears the time of harvest and when it's time to pull it, we move back the mulch and remove the T-tapes. We use an undercutting wedge-shaped blade attached to the tractor to harvest mass amounts of garlic without harming either them or their roots as the blade passes under the garlic and breaks up the ground around the garlic and pushes the entire mass upward and we just pick up the bulbs, shake off the dirt and set it aside for immediate removal to the shade. We level and smoothe out the beds and spread it out between the beds, automatically fertilizing as we go. Not all can be harvested that way as some may be too few in number and they are dug by hand using a garden trowel. If a bed contains more than one kind of garlic, I plant the earlier harvesting cultivars on the end of the beds so they are easier to get to and the T-tapes can be trimmed off.
This year when harvest time came, dear friends Mark and Barbara Vernon of Denton, Texas, came and spent a weekend with us and volunteered to help us harvest some of the Burgundy garlic and get it hanging in the barn. They took some photos that we have included on this page. I was too busy harvesting to take any pictures of us doing it and I'm grateful to them for sharing their pics with us. We built a campfire out back and had a cookout and after dinner I played my Indian flute while Mark beat his drums and a decent simulation of music was heard. One year our friend Ron Johnson from the Colony, Texas joined in with his guitar and we did a rousing version of Ghost Riders in the Sky out here on the Texas prairie. The Indian flute makes a great addition to Ghost Riders, giving it an almost haunting sound and an etherial quality. It is the only time I have ever played with other musicians and I really enjoyed it. For me the Indian flute is a solitary thing because there is no one aroud for me to play with. Sometimes I go down to the creek to play and birds come around and sit in nearby trees and wonder about me and I wonder about them, too, but I keep playing anyway.
After being dug gently from their bed, one way or another, we pile them into small wagons or wheelbarrows and take the into the shade and then into the barn where we hang them to dry down, or Cure, as it is called. They are gathered into bundles of 10 - 20 and a loop os string is wrapped around them and we hang them from the ceiling of the breezeway in the barn and label them as to variety, etc. They stay in this curing barn for a few weeks until their roots and necks are completely dried. When fully cured, those for immediate sale will be trimmed and cleaned and placed in the walk-in cooler at 55-60 degreesF. For longer term storage we leave the leaves and roots on and move them to a cooler, darker old wooden shed that used to be a smokehouse under an oak tree and hang the bundles from the rafters. Some varieties keep well all through the winter that way.
The pleasure of working outside all year is so overwhelming I feel a need to try to capture some images of it to share with others. Not being limited by any roof over your head and feeling the breeze in your face provides a sense of freedom that is not available inside any structure. Yes, it's cold in the winter but long hair and long beard make you feel warmer while short hair and short beard help keep you cooler in the summer. There is no adequate substitute for being out with all kinds of animals and listening to the music of the birds and the buzz of the insects. Yeah, you get a few fire ant bites and such and you have to be careful of the occasional rattlesnake, but that's a small price to pay for being out in nature where everything happens and feeling part of something important, even if it is such a small part.
I always feel that I am in the presence of God when I am outside and in the presence of people when I am inside, and that's not a bad thing, just different. After recent droughts our appreciation for all life has increased a lot. Out here you can see the connectedness of all things so much better than you can in town where the concrete and steel obstruct one's vision.
Not everyone can come out and see for themselves and we'd soon tire of so much company anyway, so I thought I would share our garden with you in pictures that are woefully inadequate to convey what we see, smell and hear or what we feel.
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We are now accepting orders for late summer-early fall 2008 delivery. |
Big News - We will have three cultivars of very rare Virus-Free garlic available this fall.
We were very lucky to be able to get three cultivars of Virus-Free garlic , some Duganski, said to be a Marbled Purple Stripe; some California Late, an Artichoke and some as yet unnamed Rocambole from Bulgaria.
This is good news for growers all over the country and even the warm winter growers have something to cheer about as the Artichokes and Marbled Purple Stripes both do well in warm winter areas. A Purple Stripe called Metechi is always the biggest and best in our garden year after year.
Why does virus-free have any special appeal and how do they do it? At this point I'm not entirely clear as to all the features and benefits of virus-free garlic but I can tell you how they are developed and that ridding a cultivar of virii causes the to grow larger and heavier than the same cultivars the contain virii.
I'm not sure what effects being virus-free has on the health benefits of garlic but researchers have shown in the past that densec, heavier varieties, Porcelains, in particular had greater capability to produce Allcin, from which the most healthy fat-soluble compounds are derived.
All natural garlics contain some virii; it's what happens out in the wild, life happens. These virii have no known harmful effects on humans but apparently only affect the garlics and most of their effects are unknown although a few are; for example, the yellow streak virus carried by wheat curl mites cause a garlics leaves to show some yellow streaks but their effects on the clove is minimal if anything.
If a garlic bulb has a viral contamination, and they all do, almost every part of the plant is affected. All, in fact but the tiniest growing tip where the virus has not yet gotten a grip on the plant. This tiny growing tip, called a meristem, is snipped out under a microscope and tediousky grown out from that tip and that virus-free tip will eventually become a bulb with virus-free cloves and the cloves will also be virus-free and can be replanted to produce virus-free offspring.
It takes several years of replanting all or most of the cloves for a single virus-free bulb to reproduce into a marketable number of bulbs to base a virus-free seed garlic business on. They are still a few years from widespread distribution.
By removing the virii, it causes the bulbs to get bigger and denser. This is only the second effort I know of ever to produce virus-free garlic. The earlier one was done in California in the 1980s but the grower discontinued his program because it produced such large garlics , over 3" in diameter, that he had a hard time selling such large garlics and he quit doing it. I understand he is retired now and no longer involved.
Our virus-free garlics were produced by a different retired plant pathologist and grown in Oregon and we're ready to try again so we can see for ourselves what the results are and are inviting our customers to try them also and see how they do for them.
We are the only place in the country at this time offering virus-free garlics for sale on the internet. They were not grown organically and normally we would not handle such garlic but since there is no source of organically grown virus-free garlics, these can be introduced into an organic operation and their offspring, if grown by a certified organic grower would become certified organic next year.
They're a little pricy but the grower is rightfully proud of his accomplishment and the amount of time he has invested into this very worthwhile project.
What is the future of these V-F garlics? How long will they stay virus-free? I don't know. Nobody knows how many years it took garlic to pick up all its virii.
Nobody knows how long it would take to re-acquire some more of them via insects, etc. or how often new virus-free planting stock would have to be purchased in order to assure an essentially virus-free crop.
We're stepping out on unexplored turf here. Whacking out new trails, so to speak. We'll learn as we go.
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We are now accepting orders for late summer-early fall 2008 delivery. |
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[ Our Home Page ] [ Online Catalog ] [ Garlic Overview ] [ 40 Varieties ] [ Growing Garlic ] [ Cooking with Garlic ] [ Chemistry of Garlic ] [ Garlic Pills & Oils, Etc. ] [ Health Benefits ] [ Links ] [ FAQ's ] [ How to Order ]
[ Sampler Assortments ]
[ Pickle & Preserve Garlic ]
[ Artichoke (Softneck) Garlics ]
[ Asiatic Garlics ]
[ Creole Garlics ]
[ Porcelain Garlics ]
[ Purple Stripe Garlics ]
[ Rocambole Garlics ]
[ Silverskin (Softneck) Garlics ]
Our site is always under construction. --This page updated July 3, 2008.
If you would like to communicate with us, please send email to:
bob@web-access.net
This page created in March of 2006.
We hope this page will show thousands of people about the Celebration of life in our garden at our place. - Thanks.