Don The Garlic Guy

A few years ago a good friend of mine asked me to grow some garlic in my garden.  I’ve been a gardener for most of my life having learned some basic gardening skills from my dad as a young boy.  Of course by now I’ve honed those skills and can grow most crops pretty well, but I didn’t know a thing about growing garlic. 

Well, after I did a little research I thought I would give it a try and grow some garlic.  I ordered eight bulbs of both the hardneck and softneck variety and set about planting the popped cloves in the ground in October of 2004.  It was a small crop but I was pleased with what I grew and went about saving the bulbs I had harvested for the next growing season.  It was all I could do to keep my wife out of the garlic bucket, but I managed to replant a little more stock the next growing season.  By the end of the second year  I was beginning to get the hang of how to grow, harvest and store the garlic I planted but still had a lot to learn.

Our family bought a hundred acre farm in Gilmanton, NH in 2008.  During the winter we had over six acres of trees logged on the property, had the stumps removed in late spring, early summer, and planted some perennial rye grass to start adding nutrients to the soil.   By having the trees cleared this will give us an opportunity to expand our garlic offerings well into the future.  There’s enough open fields to grow the kind of garlic that I’ve been dreaming about growing for a while now, naturally grown, big and clean, and very robust and aromatic!  I believe our 2009 crop of German White and Music was an excellent indication of how successful we will be in 2010.  We consistently achieved 2 ½ inch bulb size with very little crop loss, even with all the rain we had in June and July in the Northeast.

I’m now in my sixth year of growing garlic.  Only about 30 percent of last year’s crop was grown in New Hampshire.  We have now made the complete growing transition to our farm in the Lakes Region of New Hampshire and everything from here on out will be grown there.  We are very excited that we now have over 30,000 cloves comprising 21 different varieties of softneck and hardneck garlic. 

So now it’s time to let old Mother Nature take its course and hopefully little green leaves will pop up through the ground come February and March … or April when all the snow clears!

So check back with me next spring to see how the crop is developing.  And if you’ve had the opportunity to taste some of our gourmet garlic powder let me know what you think.  I really would appreciate it!

The Garlic Guy
  don@thegarlicguy.com