Yipppppeee! The Garlic is finally in. It feels really good to see all that garlic hanging in our farm centre. And wow, what a great looking crop this year. Best crop yet! We've been growing out this garlic seed for the past 3 years, and it really shows. Nice big bulbs, most of them sized at Super Colossal (an actual garlic size unit lol).
It took Nevin and I twenty hours, over three days, to harvest/process/pack all the garlic. That's 8 1/2 beds worth of garlic (at 150ft/bed). Plus, our friend and long-time customer, Daniel helped us for 5 hours. (Thanks Daniel!). Then it took us 6 hours to hang it all in the farm centre here. For a total of 31 hours. Not bad for about 1500lbs of Garlic!
We grow a Red Russian, and an Italian variety . As well as a very rare, extra-early purple Asiatic variety (thanks Tam!). We've also added a Yugoslavian variety to the mix this year.
Sorry to all who have inquired about seed sales, but we're not planning on selling any this year. We'll be planting all we have this fall, in order to greatly increase production for next year. Putting in an acre of garlic this fall, and increasing it to two acres next year. There's good money to be made in garlic, especially Certified Organic garlic (of which we will be fully Cert. Org. this winter). And we're in a very suitable growing region, with two of the largest garlic seed farms in BC in the same valley as us :)
More updates to come so stay tuned!
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| Only PART of our total harvest! |
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| Red Russian garlic waiting to be hung up to dry |
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| Our very special purple Asiatic variety. Its kind of like a family heirloom for me. My best friend's parents, when we were growing up together, grew out this seed for 20+ years on their organic farm. Then, when we both grew up and had farms of our own, my friend reluctantly sold me a small amount (with the caveat that I cant sell it to anyone). And we've been building up our stocks over the past three years. Its a beautiful variety, that comes off about 3 - 4 weeks earlier than our other varieties. Which is a huge deal in the garlic world! :) |
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| Nevin starting to hang the garlic up in the farm centre |
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| From top to bottom: Soft-neck Italian, Hard-neck Red Russian, Hard-neck Purple Asiatic |
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| Nev inspecting the harvest |
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| Thats one happy farmer! |
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| Mmmmmmmmmmmm Garlic! |
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