Garlicana is a very small farm located in the southern end of the Cascade Mountains in Oregon. Here a diverse array of garlic and shallots are grown without the use of toxic chemical fertilizers, herbicides, pesticides or fungicides and careful attention is paid to sustainable soil practices. The farm specializes in less common varieties and developing new varieties through traditional seed breeding methods.
November
Autumn has arrived. The leaves have turned all shades of yellows and reds, nights are cool while days are mild. While leaves are dropping, their bright colors lighting up the grounds at night, heavy leaf fall will come after the first hard freeze which, light frosts aside, has yet to occur. With all storage crops in, the last of the cover crops sown, it’s planting time. On warm days it’s hard to be inside popping and sorting cloves. This task takes far longer than the actual planting and i’m rather picky about what goes into the ground and what gets ground for powder. I generally set aside more than i need for planting. I’m also scaling back by a few thousand cloves so there’s plenty of seed stock still available including the ever popular Creole types that are better suited for warmer climates. Please check for availability before ordering.
October
The first rain came and went and it’s been quite busy leading up to it. It is a relief to have compost spread, raked, the field chiseled, tilled, garlic beds shaped or cover crops sown and harrowed. I’m midway through potato and winter squash harvest. A good chunk of the winter’s firewood is split and stacked, just in time for the cooler fall weather. Most pending seed orders have been shipped. That said there’s plenty of seed garlic available, though it’s best to check for availability on specific items. I try to reply to emails but if you want recommendations, hopefully having looked over the offering here first, i’m more easily reached by phone.
There’s something worth repeating here. The basic formula of how much you need to plant: your row length measured in inches divided by your in-row spacing (mine is 6″) multiplied by the number of rows. This gives you a clove count available in your space. Most garlic varieties contain 40-60 plantable cloves per pound. More specifics are on the site but that should give you a decent estimate.
mid September
While days are still quite warm, the season is changing. While there’s been a bissel of rain, the cessation of irrigation upstream has made for a dramatic improvement in the creek. The sound of water flowing through rocks in the beaver dam is a relief to hear again and while the massive die off of fish and macro-invertebrates was as frustrating as it was depressing, life returns. Patience is necessary: in a few hundred millennia, things will be just as they ought to be.
I was off farm to the big city up north to vend at an annual tomato festival. Thanks to all who showed up and got garlic! Now i’m back trying to catch up on all the harvesting, weeding and soon prepping soil for fall planting. I will start packing seed orders next week for the first wave of shipping. Inventory is still good on most varieties but i recommend including a potential substitute list just in case. I usually contact people if there’s an item out of stock. I may offer some non garlic items next season. I’m excited about a big crop of cannellini beans that i have yet to thresh and winnow. It’s perfect vehicle in which to taste and contrast garlic varieties.
September
After weeks of hot weather, things are on the verge of turning. I have seldom, if ever seen the creek this low. The pools here, enhanced by both watershed restoration project and the indefatigable work of beaver colonies, are some the few to hold up on the entire stretch. Consequently, thirsty creatures converge. Mammals aside it’s been a pleasure to see a pair of Great Blue Herons with at least one juvenile.
Garlic cleaning is finished and over 2200 lbs. is in storage, ready to go. There’s a lot of farm tasks to be tended to from dry bean harvest to turning in summer cover crops. A mountain of garlic stems will soon be fed to a small flock of angora goats. I am now accepting fall orders. If you have questions, particularly for recommendations, i may be easier to reach over phone than in email. For ordering information, please check out the Contact/Order page.
Summer: August
The end of harvest is generally a turning point in summer here. There’s always a bit of catch up on neglected tasks. The sorghum-sudan cover crop was mowed. In another month or so it will be mowed again and spaded in. This block will be where the garlic is planted. In another block there’s a buckwheat cover crop. This will get two more cover crops until the garlic is rotated there. I have cut way back on fall fresh vegetable production which has allowed time to work on TGS, something i haven’t been able to do for a few years due to being too busy. Most mornings have been devoted to plucking bulbils off at least 100 umbels. The chickens have been eating piles of bulbils! Hopefully there’s good seed set; if so, i will offer surplus TGS next spring. In the meantime, as of this writing, i’m around 600 lbs. into cleaning. Order for fall shipment are being accepted. If you write, i’ll try to reply in a timely fashion. If asking for recommendations, it helps me to have some idea of what you want out of a garlic variety. I know there’s a lot on offer and it can be a little overwhelming but i need something to go on. Also, pricing and shipping information is on the contact page.
Summer: July
The early summer heat has arrived with temps in the 90s. The corn is indeed knee high, the potato crop has been hilled up, fall brassicas seeded and germinated. The summer cover crops, buckwheat and sorghum-sudan are growing up amidst the remaining residue of the previous winter cover crop. The last of the scapes were finally cut, except for those left to elongate, debulbil and let flower. There’s the usual endless list of things that must be done. The top of that is, of course, the garlic harvest, which is well underway. Thus far, most of it looks good. While some was deleteriously affected by the March flood due to plants getting flattened by mulch which was removed when the water receded, most of it appears to have gained from all the rich silt. Interestingly, usually i repurpose a fair bit of straw from the garlic and pile it onto winter squash and other crops. I think the flood accelerated decomposition and much of it has broken down. That increased biological activity may have contributed to the crop yields this year.
Late Spring: June
It’s been a dry spring yet still quite lush, the hills are green, wildflowers are blooming. While there have been some hot days, overall, it’s been a mild spring. Fruit is forming on the orchard trees, nearby hay fields are just starting to be cut. I just mowed and spaded in my overwinter cover crop. The rye was up to 7 feet and every stalk was entangled with vetch and peas. After a few weeks, a summer cover crop, sorghum-sudan, will be sown. This will get mowed once at 4+ feet and grow up again. Then in late summer, it’ll get flailed and spaded in. Then onto the garlic crop. I am convinced that the soil building through cover cropping has been the most important factor in the improvement in the garlic crop. Speaking of which, the harvest has just begun for Turbans. Scape harvest will continue through late June. Usually there’s scaping on several shallot varieties, the Golden in particular. It’s pretty minimal this year which i would attribute to the mild Spring. We’re used to huge temperature swings from morning to afternoon and as well as cold and hot spells in Spring. This was seldom the case this season. There is brooming on a few garlic varieties and it still perplexes me what the cause is. I have theories, all of which i can find flaw in. Overall though, the crop looks good.
Garlicana is looking for help on the farm, especially during the summer harvest, June and July. In many ways this is a standard farm internship as this is also a diverse vegetable farm. Needless to say, garlic is the primary crop so if learning about the many facets of growing varietal garlic on a small scale interests you, do reach out and we can discuss details. That said, it i am planning on scaling back fall vegetable production. This ought to allow time to devote to breeding work, other projects and just getting out for a hike in the National Forest before it gets logged, incinerated or privatized.
There have been numerous inquiries about the artwork on this site, most of which is by Fiona. This is but a glimpse into her outstanding repertoire. Primarily a print maker, her work can be seen here.
Late March:
Well, it had been a fairly typical under until March 16th. Back in December there was a minor flood. The stream gauge was over 8 feet (winter normal is 3-4′). The creek crept over the bank, there was ponding in the field and standing water in the pathways between garlic rows. Water streamed at the foot a the stairs below my house. I have been through a number of flood events in my time here and have taken steps to reduce the impact, from berms along the bank to stacking four pallets inside the root cellar to put the potato sacks on. The December flood was alarming but after the water receded, i sighed, finished planting the shallots in gooey soil and got on with the next task. So after a massive storm came through overnight on March 15th, the morning found me moving anything realistic up to higher ground. Alas the garlic crop, in its rotation, is in a low spot in the field which by late morning, was submerged. As the creek water cascaded into the field, water poured in from across the road. The heavy straw mulch lifted, drip lines floated, eddies formed. Mulch washed up on the fence, stoppering the field until the water poured over, scouring out a driveway below. By late morning, wet snow fell and while it didn’t really stick here, it did at higher elevations and that slowed things down. The stream gauge peaked at 10.56′ at nearly 8000 cfs. The intensity of flood was exacerbated by both last summer’s two wildfires and the thousands of acres of clearcut logging on this watershed alone. The erosion caused by even the salvage logging operations has grave impacts downstream.
After all the drama of watching the torrent rush by the house, there’s a sense of dread at the clean up. Some of that will have to wait until the dries out as the ground is too soft for the tractor to move washed up trees and other debris. Fortunately i had help from neighbors with the garlic. After a couple of days, the field drained, leaving mats of straw and tangled drip lines atop swaths of garlic, crushing some plants, others poking out through the silty mulch. I don’t know how much garlic will perk back up once the weather turns. The roots are very well established so i don’t see loss from heaving. While heavy clay soil can become anaerobic when saturated for lengthy periods, the years of cover cropping, building soil, has been essential. Much as there’s loss of top soil from the velocity of floodwaters, the established cover crops captured silt and forest debris. When i get to peeling the silt encrusted straw caught up in the fence, this too will be worked in. Frequent fires, floods, drought, unless you have ideal conditions, this is what we have to adapt to. Hopefully the loss in the garlic isn’t too severe.
Winter:
It was a fairly normal Southern Oregon winter: rainy December, cold January, February snow. The colony of beavers has been very active. It has, however, been a very disappointing year for salmon return. I have not seen coho and while an occasional hopeful heron flew by, even the eagles have given up perching on the snag above a pool where one used to see the fish. In early January we took a drive through hills above the farm, an area quite familiar after living here for many years. This last summer, two fires swept through: the first likely ignited by a cigarette, the second, which started not long after the first was contained, by logging. It is very disorienting to go through landscapes transformed from lush forest to charred sticks over blackened earth. Most forest fires are a mosaic of low intensity understory burns and tree killing blazes but these fires had a large component of crown fire. With the winter rain, there are thousands of acres absent of trees to uptake the moisture and hold the soil. The inevitability of forest fires in the rural west is, to an extent, just a part of life here. This hardly the first close fire i’ve been through but the impact is still jarring. Then again, it’s no less so than large scale clearcut logging followed by herbicide spraying; fire is just less discriminating. The hydrological repercussions of the devastation wrought by mechanized deforestation or catastrophic fires isn’t merely high winter flow but in the years following, very low summer flow. This exacerbates drought, weakening shallower rooted trees, making them more susceptible to pests, pathogens and thus to more fires. The impact on aquatic species from macro-invertebrates to fish is as clear the creek after a rainless January and the absence of coho salmon a palpable loss. It need not be this way. It is worth noting that areas that were thinned, ladder fuels pruned, brush piles burned tend to be quite resilient through otherwise catastrophic fires. Those of us who use water for irrigation can do so responsibly. Then again, the scale of avaricious industrial deforestation outstrips whatever measures taken to mitigate its ruination.
If you have queries, contact me. Try calling if you don’t get a quick response to email. It’s a landline so i won’t get your texts if you try to do that. If the contact form doesn’t work, just email directly to garlic@garlicana.com (i actually prefer that to the contact form) and let me know.
Please read the Contact/Order page before asking for prices, shipping information or the address.
When you send in your check, if there is neither a form nor piece of paper that includes who you are, your email and shipping address, i will neither send your order nor cash your check. Preferably there’s an order form with the varieties and quantities listed as it takes me time to search through emails to find your order on the computer.
At this point, while there is no True Garlic Seeds available, there is True Seed Progeny. Until consistent farm help can be found, there’s simply not the time to sort them out. That said, i intend to make available some small volumes of promising varieties derived from TGS that i have not necessarily named. I generally trial new accessions for several years. There are so many that it’s kind of a process of deselecting them. There are varieties that have useful traits but aren’t charismatic enough to come up with names and continually offer and yet, they are fertile and worth growing to make crosses. These accessions will be derivatives of varieties that have been pledged to OSSI, thus all offspring will necessarily remain in the public domain. If interested, inquire after harvest this summer. There is no list of these a quantities are limited to 1/4 each.
A few years ago Garlicana did an online presentation for the Culinary Breeding Network’s Winter Vegetable Sagra. There was a whole week of presentations on garlic available here.
