2020 Garlic Season

Hello Garlic Growers and Enthusiasts,

Our 2020 Garlic Catalogue has been out since August 15th, We are sold out of everything but a few bulbils packets, as of October 2nd. It has been a wonderful garlic season. Thank you to those who placed orders and dropped in at the farm!

  If you haven't already, you can email me to get on the mailing list : Julie Fleischauer goldenacresfarm@hotmail.com or julie.goldenacres@gmail.com

 Our catalogue is posted under the "2020 Catalogue" page. With a short list of what is still available (everything else is sold out). (If you can't find the page and you are using a mobile device, you may have to switch to "view web version")

 This year, we have just been doing pick up orders and shipping, as the Stratford Garlic Festival was our only other venue. Golden Acres Farm is now open by appointment only. 

  If you require, we can provide contact-less pick up for your order. Regular pick-up location is around to the back of the barn, inside the large sliding doors where our drying/storage room is, in the repurposed granary room. If you have picked up garlic in the last couple years, you will know where I mean:

  Contact-less pick up will be inside the small door at the front of the barn:

 Please take note that we do not process credit cards, so please bring cash or a cheque, or prepay by email transfer. Prices this year are $18.00/pound, $9.00/ half pound, and $4.00 / bulb. There will be some 3 lb, 5 lb, and 10 lb limits on the bulk strains this year, and some of the strains will be available  only by the 1/2 pound or by the bulb. This is to encourage small gardeners, and to hopefully make more selection available to everyone. 

We've got some Silver Skins coming out of the ground today, that look fairly promising, so they will be available on the catalogue, sold by the bulb.  The Silver Skins and Creoles were planted this spring. I'm finding Spring planting just for those two kinds is often better than fall planting. I am not offering any spring shipping however, so if you want to try spring planting them, you'll have to store and cold treat them yourself. They keep really well, and cold treatment consists of putting them in the garage, or a cold space, for about a month before planting (just be careful not to freeze the bulbs in minus Celsius conditions).  Otherwise, they can be planted in the fall, with all the other kinds. I suspect that they do better in a protected area anyway, rather than the wide open field where I plant them. 

In general, the garlic did really well this year. I hope that if you've grown garlic, you've had similar success.

 Garlicky Regards, Julie

Stratford Garlic Festival Cancelled for 2020

Vendors got the notice that the Kiwanis Club of Stratford has made the difficult decision to cancel the Garlic Festival this year.
I discovered that it may have been advertised in some media as an up-and-coming event. It was intended to continue this year; however, the ongoing social distancing rules proved too much for the organizers to humanly navigate. It takes an atomic clock to keep up with the news these days. So to clear up confusion wherever possible, I thought I'd put up a notice on my blog.

I expect we will be doing more online sales this year, through the Catalogue that I e-mail to you in August, if you've signed up or asked to be on the mailing list. I also post the Catalogue on this blog in August, under it's own page.

I very much invite customers to pick up their orders at our farm! I am positive we can come up with a comfortable solution for picking up orders in September.

 The half-acre of garlic in our field is looking pretty good so far. Only three leek moths were caught in the traps so far this season, so it looks like the pressure from those pests will be minimal. I'm looking forward to a good harvest!
All the best to you,
Julie

The Beautiful Colour Green

 I love this time of year - when you see something green and gloriously growing, it's such a fresh new sight that you might actually take the time to marvel at it, and give it the attention that it deserves.
 The garlic of course has been up for a while, but it's finally attaining a handsome green, whereas it looked a little frosted and uncertain before. There is a really good stand this year!- I don't know how other growers made out with winterkill this year, but it's virtually non-existent here.
  I've had a few more questions than usual about spring garlic seed this spring, so I thought it'd be fun to show the difference of Spring, versus fall planted garlic:

On the left is Red Russian (a Marbled Purple Stripe) and the rest of the fall planted main crop. Center is Ail Rose de Lautrec ( a Creole) And to the right is Aglio Rosso (also Creole). Both Creoles were put in our vegetable cold storage in mid February, then planted one of the first days of April. 

This is not a perfect comparison - they are different varieties, and the Creoles were significantly smaller in bulb and clove size than the Marbled Purple Stripes to start. But, it gives you an idea of the advantages of planting in the fall.
  And, just to clarify, I don't sell Spring garlic seed. Bulbils and Creole and Silverskins are the only kinds of garlic I recommend planting in spring. The creoles and Silverskins seem to do better because their tender constitutions do not have to bear the brunt of our cold winters, whereas other, "more native" varieties of garlic, thrive in our wintry latitude. Bulbils do well either fall or spring planted, or so I've found. I wish I could plant Turbans in the spring, but keeping them dormant and in good quality is really not that easy. It's the quickest growing - fastest spoiling of any garlic. It's always sprouting by the new year. Not something you want to take a chance on for spring planting, especially since a seed slowly uses up it's energy reserves, and has less vigour in the spring. The effect is mitigated in Creoles and silverskins, because they keep the best. In the words of Bob Wildfong, Director of Seeds of Diversity Canada, "a seed is a baby plant, it needs food." When it's stored correctly, it uses up less food,but it still needs something. A dormant seed uses the food stored in it's body, which is why old seed sprouts and often grows slower, if it sprouts at all. Sometimes seeds die. (I'm talking about garden seeds now, lettuce, kale, peas, and whatever other kind of seed you can think of.) Fresh seed is always ideal.

I'm excited to see what kind of innovation will appear in gardening techniques this year. I never used to think wecould grow basil on our clay-loam soil here, but it turns out we can, if we hill it up and mix compost and a bit of sand in the soil directly around and under the basil plug. A lot is possible these days that once wasn't. We have a lot more tools,and ideas about how to use those tools. I haven't heard about a run on chicken wire and pest protection yet, but I'm sure it will hit in due course. There's a sort of irony in that farmers have felt criticized for years about how we deal with small, furry opportunists. And they say there is more wildlife in the city than there is in the country, (population by square meters, I'm thinking, which would make sense, since the  same is true of the number of people in a city).  I guess I will find out, with my city garden this year. The house I bought in Stratford was built in 1899. It's amazing to think how people lived 120 years ago. I have such gratitude for the foundation of knowledge they have built for us to stand on.
  Julie