By the way, if you are curious, Last fall on November 20th, the soil was about the same texture and dryness. I used a wheel hoe to scuffle the penny cress and other late weeds that were growing - again hand work, so low compaction on borderline wet soil...can you tell that I like farm work workouts! It really helps to get a head start on the weeds, before the spring season has even begun. I may plant early, but I weed late. If possible. Weather permitting, as always!
Growing Ontario Garlic
Golden Acres Farm
Saturday 9 March 2024
The Earliest I've ever Planted Spring Garlic
By the way, if you are curious, Last fall on November 20th, the soil was about the same texture and dryness. I used a wheel hoe to scuffle the penny cress and other late weeds that were growing - again hand work, so low compaction on borderline wet soil...can you tell that I like farm work workouts! It really helps to get a head start on the weeds, before the spring season has even begun. I may plant early, but I weed late. If possible. Weather permitting, as always!
Tuesday 17 October 2023
Fall Planting and Fall Growth
What I find interesting about the last two years, is the long period of warm dry weather we've gotten after planting on September 20th. I start to wonder if I might be better delaying planting by a week. The thing is, without cold, wet soil, the garlic doesn't seem to be in any hurry to grow, so it's kind of like pre-loading the soil with your garlic cloves and waiting for mother nature to pull the trigger. (The only concern you might have is if the garlic rots or gets eaten before it gets growing, but I've found it pretty resilient if you start with good cloves.)
Wednesday 20 September 2023
Getting Ready to Plant Garlic!
I know most people consider it early, but at Golden Acres Farm, we always plant our garlic at or around September 20th. Our local weather pattern has been pretty consistent over the sixteen years that we've been growing garlic to sell. It's the one chance we can count on for the soil to be workable and we are able to plant in T shirts, and that's how we like it!
I've always wanted to make a video on how to plant garlic (tried last year, but you can't hear me speaking for all the wind static). I might try again this year, but it'll likely be too late for some of you who are planting as early as we are. So, I'm really pleased to have found this website, through a generous garlic customer who recommended it to me. I agree with most of their advice, and am super impressed by their style (you can tell they are creative artists), still I will always recommend that you read with curiosity and critical awareness. How you apply the knowledge you gather is the key to being connected and grounded in your own experience.
Grey Duck Garlic: The Complete Guide to Growing Gorgeous Garlic from Seed (greyduckgarlic.com)
We are planning to strike our first four rows today, and are so grateful for the sunshine!
We've got a lot of the garlic "cracked" (cloves split apart for planting), and the stock remaining for people to buy is pretty low. I really only have Angelo's, Armenian, Newfoundland Porcelain, Darwin, Guatemalan Ikeda in any appreciable amount, and some of it might be in danger of getting planted here, if I have the extra space ;-)
Thanks for a great year! Julie
Sunday 20 August 2023
Open for orders 2023
We are open for garlic orders!
Check out the printable 2023 Catalogue
You can also find a list of the strains, what has sold out, and what is still available, on the 2023 Catalogue page.
And if you still have garlic to trim, consider making some hardneck garlic bundles this year.
Here's a quick and simple method, on my recently published how-to video: How to make Hardneck Garlic Bundles (bitchute.com)
Monday 14 August 2023
So Many Earth Worms at Harvest Time!
I love earth worms, sometimes it is so dry at harvest that they bury themselves deep and I see very few of them when I'm digging up the garlic, so the silver lining of a wet year is the gratitude I feel for those little immigrants who nurture my plants from the roots up. Years ago my sister gave me a book on earthworms (The Earth Moved: on the remarkable achievements of earthworms, by Amy Stewart) and I learned that some types of worms live exclusively around the roots of plants, others, like red wrigglers thrive only on decomposing material, such as compost piles. The earthworms we know in gardening and farming are mostly European by decent, and compliment agriculture, by being vigorous and active - they decompose things too fast for the slow, gentle undergrowth of old forests, but we like them just fine in our fields.
So, harvest went well, in between the rains, and the garlic is gradually getting dry enough to trim.
Friday 21 July 2023
Crop Update, July 21, 2023
Porcelains. July 19, 2023 |
I expect I'll be releasing the Catalogue for this years crop on Monday, August 21st, so that we have a chance to get inventory trimmed and weighed.
We received several inches of rain fall in the last month, thankfully spread out enough that the puddles did not become semi-permanent lakes. Looks like the garlic stood it well, though I was going spare for a while, not being able to get out to the field to really look at it, or prepare mentally and physically for harvest. July 19th was the first time I've been able to walk out freely, on dry ground, for about two weeks.
Friday 31 March 2023
Black Garlic
I found the best way to preserve those early sprouting Turban garlics that you can never use up in time!
Black Garlic!
There is some controversy over black garlic, both over its origin and whether or not it is a fermented product, but there is no controversy in my soul when it comes to eating it!
Any garlic can be made into black garlic, though I've done some experimenting with different varieties, and the type of garlic you start out with definitely affects the flavour and texture of the final product. The machine used to make black garlic, and mainstream the process, was invented in Korea a couple decades ago, so many websites will claim that the process is relatively new, and that it originated in Korea. At the Guelph Organic Conference, this past January, I had the pleasure of speaking with an Asian woman who was selling black garlic, and she assured me that black garlic has been around a lot longer than the internet. It is a traditional ingredient in Asian culture, going so far back, she's not sure which country actually discovered it: China, Thailand or Korea.
All three countries have been making and eating black garlic for as long as anyone can remember, but they used a very different process than the hasty, convenient method of putting it in the machine pictured above. Traditional black garlic was made in clay crocks, buried in the ground along with coals from a fire that was stoked and fed for at least 30 - 40 days...gentleman, start your campfires...can you imagine tending to such a task, all the while being uncertain of the outcome of those precious garlic bulbs, hidden away and protected by the clay pot?
With great risk comes great reward! And, perhaps, there is no shortcut to effort. I wonder quite often if the commercial product really has the similar health benefits as the traditional black garlic. It's hard to say which one has been studied the most, and unless one can find the original paper publishing the results of the nutritional analysis, and said paper mentioned how the black garlic was made, or who it was purchased from, how can we really know what the information means? Quite often numbers just don't tell the whole story. They say black garlic has twice the antioxidants, and twice the vitamin C as fresh garlic. It also contains healthy tannins and has the added benefit of not giving you garlic breath. That sounds great, and I'll happily eat it up...especially with cream cheese on bread! But, also, another question to ask is what fresh garlic are we comparing it to, to say it has twice the benefit? Supermarket bulbs or locally grown organic garlic?
In the end, it's pure garlic that goes in, and nothing else, so I figure black garlic is at least as healthy as the garlic you start with. I'm not sure if a machine you plug in for nine days has the same result or intention as a fire you stoke for 40 days, but I bought one such machine, and I feel the benefits.
Like I said in my first sentence, it's a great way to make garlic keep forever! Store black garlic in an airtight container, and it'll even keep at room temperature for over two years (a fact which leans toward the idea that it really is fermented, to my mind).
I didn't start making it right away, so I can't say what fresh dug bulbs do in such a machine (there was a setting for venting/drying excessively wet garlic, but I didn't use it). I first got the black garlic maker in November, so I immediately did several batches of Turban garlic. It was so great, I discovered that Turbans make really lovely black garlic that is smooth and creamy. I can fit about 3.75 pounds fresh garlic in the wire basket that goes in the machine, so I tucked some different bulbs in with the Turbans to find out which varieties made the best black garlic (I made a map of the basket, lol, so I could still find them when they came out charred and transformed). 2.5 pounds of black garlic comes out of the machine, every nine days. Needless to say, I kept that machine going with new batches of bulbs for quite a few months.
I think October, November and December are probably the best months to make black garlic, with an extended period for varieties that keep really well and retain their moisture content, in the clove. As the cloves experience moisture loss, or prepare for sprouting, the texture gets more dry, they can get a charred taste if processed too long, and the flavour is compromised when they sprout.
My favourites for black garlic are Rocambole, Turban and Creole. All three are really flavourful, smooth and creamy. Porcelain holds up in any circumstance it seems, and makes for a solid product, with slightly more punch flavour-wise, and more structure, texturally. Artichoke Softnecks surprised me, because they were wholesomely flavourful once made into black garlic, with good texture to boot. Silver Skins are great and can be done after you are finished with most of the other garlic. Purple Stripes and Marbled Purple Stripes confirmed what we have been telling Garlic Festival goers for years: They retain their spunk, no matter what is done to them. Personally, I didn't like them as black garlic so much. It's not that they were hot (no black garlic is) they simply didn't have the richness and fullness you'd expect, and the texture was a little more grainy.
I just realized while writing this that I didn't do any Asiatic bulbs into black garlic, which surely is a sin, as it practically screams "Asian food" right in the name...Ah, well, project for next year!
We have a good stash of black garlic, and if any of you are wondering, you can certainly try some when you come out to the farm.
I'll end my post with a little game of eye spy in the picture below: can you spy our cloves of black garlic on the gorgeous, activated charcoal bread from Vann's Fine Bakery, of Stratford?
Wednesday 1 February 2023
Planting
Sept 18, 2022 |
Sept 17, 2022 |
Sept 30, 2022 |
Nov 11, 2022 |
Nov 11, 2022 |
Some of the garlic was up by then, so we could kinda see where the rows of garlic exactly were. For the last couple years we have been putting orange or yellow stakes in every 50 ft before we close the furrow, to mark the rows, in case we get the chance to go over it before the garlic is up and that's been quite helpful, because our hiller can get off to the side a bit otherwise.
Friday 19 August 2022
Open for Garlic Orders - get ready to plant something spicy this Fall!
We have lots of beautiful porcelain garlic strains for sale, gorgeous Marbled Purple Stripes, and many other kinds as well! The Catalogue is here, and on the Catalogue page. The catalogue page also contains a list that is updated as strains of garlic sell out. The maximum limits on the Catalogue page have been adjusted as of Sept 25th, to better reflect our remaining inventory. A few strains have been sold out, but there is still lots to choose from, and a great selection of bulbils.
If you are in the area and wish to pick up an order, be advised it is a gravel road, and be sure to use your map! Google maps may send you down our sideroad. This pin on google maps shows where our laneway actually is, and it will not ask you to walk across a potentially muddy field - though I know some of you probably would do it just to get at our garlic!
Thursday 11 August 2022
August Update
Hey Garlic Growers,
Ever wonder what my garlic looks like before it's trimmed and packaged into your orders?
Here is a quick, informal video tour of the Granary (my garlic curing and storage area):
96 strains of garlic in one room. (bitchute.com)
In preparation for launching the catalogue on August 20th, here are a few details for this year:
Price is $20.00/ pound for seed garlic ( $10.00/ half pound, and $4.25/ bulb)
Eating garlic available for $12.00/ pound.
Bulbils are $5.00/ pkt of 2 umbels.
The Stratford Garlic Festival is back - scaring the vampires out of the City of Stratford again - (or so we can hope, they've run rampant in town for two years now).
Our farm will not have a booth this year, and are looking forward to experiencing it from a different perspective, as shoppers only.
It will be possible to pick up pre-orders at the Farm, on Sept 10 and 11th, if you are in the area, during one of the garlic festival days: Home - Stratford Kiwanis Garlic Festival (stratfordgarlicfestival.com)
When The Kiwanis club posts the schedule for the Festival, we will be able to set our hours for pick up times on those days.
My plan for the following year is to grow slightly larger amounts of the popular and easy-to-grow Porcelains and Marbled Purple Stripes, and down size most everything else to a seed library quantity.
I may have bulbils available from the "seed library", so that I can continue to share the genetic diversity of my garlic collection, but for 2023, I will not have the same set up for the catalogue, it will be much simpler.
Garlicky Regards, Julie
Tuesday 2 August 2022
The Harvest of 2022
Some of you may be wondering about this year's catalogue. I plan to have it out on August 20th.
I've just started trimming the Artichokes and Rocamboles, and getting a feel for quantities and how things will go. I am also plotting out the next planting of garlic, and how much seed to save, and making some changes so that I can continue to grow garlic in a way that works for me and my family. Mainly, I'm concentrating on the best porcelains and marbled purple stripes for a year (or longer) while I downsize the rest to a "seed library" quantity, just large enough to keep these varieties going, while offering bulbils to get other people started, if they are interested. I may expand again in the future, we are just working through some transitions on the farm.
Friday 24 June 2022
A Synopsis of Spring
"I'm a little garlic in Golden Acres clay-loam.Here is the rain and here is the sun.My little cloves, from around the globe, have found a home.I am always oh-so happy while my growing's done.And when you pull me out, I will shout - 'put me in your favourite stew!'"