My Husband's Latest Garden Project - Organic Garlic!

[organicgardenerswife]

My husband loves his organic garden, and spends a lot of his spare time doing something in it. (He works as a full-time carpenter.)

His latest project, on the advice of his father, which is a produce farmer, was to plant garlic, lots of garlic, over 2,000 bulbs! (25 lbs.)

His father told him what it was selling for, (over $5 a lb), and said that not a lot of large produce farmers liked to grow garlic, because it took too much hands-on care.

We live on 2.5 acres of land, a lot of it is just grass. My husband made our already large garden almost twice it's size, and planted the garlic about a month ago.

He said that now, the hardest part is going to be waiting till spring! He actually dug into the soil in a few spots, just to see what was happening, and a lot of the bulbs had little green shoots already, which was exciting.

So, we will wait and see what kind of crop we harvest next year. Perhaps our little plot of land will start paying for itself, and become an asset instead of a liability!

Anyone else that has a huge yard, and does not like to mow it - perhaps growing a specialty crop like garlic could be profitable, as long as you have a place to sell it then.

My husband will have a lot of local markets to sell the garlic in, and he would like to increase his crop every year. Perhaps, if we get huge enough, we can even provide our local Wegman's Market with organic garlic!

Smiling & cheering because of my husband's enthusiasm -
Wish us luck!
Ruth

[DeborahL]

Good luck ! It sounds like a great plan !

[gixxerific]

Yes good luck, it is goof plan. I wish I had more space.

Garlic is easy to grwo whoever said it was hard it very wrong. Increasing crops year to year is a no brainer either. Just think all those cloves will produce a bulb with at least 5 more cloves. Mutiply what you platned by 5 than agin by 5 than gain by 5. See how many plants you could have in a very short time.

keep us informed how it goes.

Dono

[rainbowgardener]

I'm with gixx, I don't know why it was said garlic takes a lot of hands on care. I planted garlic for the first time a year ago. Stuck cloves of garlic from the grocery store in the garden and did absolutely nothing to them after that (well a little bit of weeding and mulching at the beginning), harvested them in summer. Totally organic and close to zero care.

I loved it! This year I planted twice as much! (No where close to 2500 bulbs, but I have a city lot and am not growing to sell)

[PunkRotten]

Well planting and harvesting a lot of garlic could be a lot of work. And if you have no helpers it is a lot of work. Anyway, I planted a few bulbs my 1st time about a month ago. All the places I put a piece of garlic all have green shoots.


I am looking forward to see what I get when I harvest. I planted this white variety which looks like the kind you commonly see at the store and I planted a little elephant garlic.

[rainbowgardener]

Planting is easy, push a clove a little way down in the soil. But I was surprised how hard they are to harvest. It seemed like they had dug themselves down deeper than I planted them (maybe that's an illusion, I'm not sure!) and in all those months the ground had hardened around them and they are very rooted in. I expected to be able to just pull them like carrots, but it doesn't work like that. I had to dig and dig....

[Trevor]

Good luck with your new garlic-endeavour. There is some garlic growing "wild"(untended) at mmy grandparents house in a flower bed. They rarely, if ever, pick any, but it comes back year after year.

[organicgardenerswife]

Yeah, I know it will be hard work - thankfully, my husband is not afraid of hard work! He would like to increase his planting next year by adding three more varieties of garlic - planting a total of 100 lbs, instead of the 25 lbs he planted this year.

We have a 3 yr. old and a 5 yr. old who love to help in the garden. I wouldn't be surprised if they could help take care of it too, especially when taking off the scapes. I am looking forward to sauteed scapes in butter! So our garlic project will rest a bit till spring, while the garlic bulbs do their 'thing'.

[soil]

we planted 1500 this year. good luck. my tips are mulch well and pay special attention to the drying/curing process.