This Year’s Garlic Strains
Blanack
Chesnok Red
Deer Field Purple
Durjanski
Early Red Italian
Elephant
Georgian Crystal
Lorz
Metetchi
Nootka Rose
Romanian Red
Shatili
And Shallots! (We have fabulously large and tasty shallots this year!)
What we do year round for our garlic:
Fall
Our Story usually starts out in the fall. We usually plant the garlic at the end of September and the beginning of October. It can sometimes get very muddy. Our garlic is planted by hand – it is hard, back-breaking work! Thank goodness for friends and family to help us out. We usually have a big cook out after we have a big planting day. After the planting for the day 3 to 4 inches of straw mulch is then laid over the top. Mulching ensures fewer weeds and protection from harsh weather.
Field Manager Bob preps the soil in the fall. Our garlic is planted by hand – it is hard, back-breaking work! Thank goodness for friends and family to help us out. We usually have a big cook out after we have a big planting day. After the planting for the day 3 to 4 inches of straw mulch is then laid over the top. Mulching ensures fewer weeds and protection from harsh weather.
Winter
The garlic is popping out of the ground and our teams of top-notch agronomists are on the job. We use the latest technology and we are cutting edge. We take the good news……and deal with the bad.
Spring
This is also the time where lots of pumpkins have been planted, but there are still more to plant! We’ll have a beautiful crop of pumpkins this year, so plan on coming to the farm for your Fall decorations! We’ve started planting corn, too. We like to stagger the corn planting so that we’ll have corn for more than just 2 weeks. We’re looking forward to some tasty ears this fall! A round of weeding has been completed and it’s almost time to start all over again. It can be back breaking work.
It can be back breaking work. Once we spot the weeds…we go right after them.We have several garlic patches to weed. Sometimes the weeding is easy. Sometimes the weeding is hard. Sometimes we conquer the weeds. Sometimes the weeds overcome us. However, with help from family and friends, we can get back to conquering the weeds. We put on just the right amount of manure on the crops in the Fall. The garlic looks like it doesn’t need an extra boost of bone meal. The curly tops are cut in the Spring and used the same way you would use green onions. MMMM… Good! It’s harvest time. As soon as we pick the garlic, we tie it up and immediately hang it under the roof in all of our barns. Harvesting can sometimes be very, Very exhausting! Sometimes we get on each other’s nerves. In the end we try to help each other out. Well… some times.