On the heels of a very successful 2024 garlic harvest, we decided to double the number of bulbs we planted from 225 to 450. We planted two beds, which each had three 75 bulb rows. We held back 80 of our best bulbs from the 2024 harvest for this.
We followed the same method we had the previous year by spreading 4 inches of compost on top of the beds and then pushing the seed cloves deep into compost until they were pressed up against the soil. Then we applied a thick layer of leaf mulch on top after planting.
Even though I have been growing garlic for 20 years, I still get anxious while I wait for the shoots to push through the leaf mulch. Has there been too much rain? Are they rotting in the ground? Has the wind blown away too much leaf mulch? Is there too much leaf mulch? Have the critters gotten to them? By the time December rolls around I can't help myself from taking a peek to see how things are doing.
By January, the garlic had survived the winter rains and were looking pretty healthy. Now new anxieties start to take hold. Has it been cold enough, for long enough, for the cloves to vernalize? Is there too much nitrogen in the compost?
By early March, the garlic is looking good with multiple dark green leaves extending above the leaf mulch. Now is a good time to throw down some organic bone meal and sweep some leaves back into the beds to keep the weed pressure down.
At the beginning of June, the scapes are emerging and it is time to pick them so that the plant's energy can be directed to bulb production. We pick the scapes as soon as they emerge so that they can be used in stir fries, potato salads, and pickled. Admittedly, they look really nice when they are allowed to grow and start to coil, but we find they can get a bit woody at that stage, so from a culinary perspective, we prefer the early emerging scapes over the older coiled scapes.
Once the scapes have been harvested you know it is only a matter of weeks until it is time to harvest the garlic bulbs. Something that we were not prepared for was how much work it was going to be to harvest 450 bulbs. You would think that harvesting 450 bulbs is twice as much work as harvesting 225 and from a pure numbers perspective that would make sense. However, we learned the techniques you use for harvesting 450 bulbs need to be different from what you do to harvest 225. With 225 bulbs, using a wheelbarrow for transportation is not a big deal, but on our farm, the growing area is removed from the processing area, so transporting 450 bulbs is a chore. Thankfully we have a tractor with a trailer which helped make things easier. For curing, with 225 bulbs you can lay them out on a makeshift curing rack. With 450, space becomes a consideration. This year we hung the garlic between some extra t-posts we had.
In summary, we doubled our harvest, won second place in the Saanich Fair, and demand outstripped supply again. Aside from our prize-winning garlic being stolen from the Saanich Fair, it was a pretty successful year. We have held back 200 bulbs and we are planning to double our planting again to 900 bulbs for 2026.
— VVF