With the barn 98% complete, insurance claims nearly tidied up, and thank you notes almost out the door, it's time to get back into a more regular routine again. One big thing I've been doing on the farm in the background over the last few months has been harvesting, cleaning, curing, fretting, and processing the garlic. In the end, it's turned out well, but there have been a few challenges that I've dealt with as I develop the skills to deal with a sizable harvest.
In the picture below, I've finished harvesting one of the 5 varieties we planted last fall and have loaded it into the truck for further processing. One thing that I haven't discussed yet, and is not very obvious from the photo, is that we got hit hard by rust this year. I didn't manage to get a good picture of it close up, but here is a photo from wikimedia commons. As you can see, the plants develop orange pustules on the leaves which are actually just a symptom of the real damage caused by the fungus inside the plant that is sapping away a good portion of the plant's sugar production. I noticed the rust well before harvest, and I wasn't sure what to expect regarding its affect on yield or long term disease problems. It did affect yield, but not as drastically as I was afraid of, and some more research I did suggests that it isn't easily passed on to garlic seed cloves. I also talked to other garlic growers nearby and it seems that the rust hit all garlic all across Skagit and Island counties, suggesting that it wasn't something I could have prevented. For the time being, the truck bed seems to be perfectly suitable for transporting garlic directly from the field to the next processing step.
In the picture below, I've finished harvesting one of the 5 varieties we planted last fall and have loaded it into the truck for further processing. One thing that I haven't discussed yet, and is not very obvious from the photo, is that we got hit hard by rust this year. I didn't manage to get a good picture of it close up, but here is a photo from wikimedia commons. As you can see, the plants develop orange pustules on the leaves which are actually just a symptom of the real damage caused by the fungus inside the plant that is sapping away a good portion of the plant's sugar production. I noticed the rust well before harvest, and I wasn't sure what to expect regarding its affect on yield or long term disease problems. It did affect yield, but not as drastically as I was afraid of, and some more research I did suggests that it isn't easily passed on to garlic seed cloves. I also talked to other garlic growers nearby and it seems that the rust hit all garlic all across Skagit and Island counties, suggesting that it wasn't something I could have prevented. For the time being, the truck bed seems to be perfectly suitable for transporting garlic directly from the field to the next processing step.
Since our old barn was gone and the new barn was still under construction, we didn't have a dedicated curing space. I hung up some billboard tarps in the greenhouse to make a shady area and hooked up a fan for ventilation and had a halfway decent curing space. I tried a few methods of processing the freshly harvested garlic, but found that stripping the two or three outer bulb leaves off was by far the least time intensive process. Our soil does not brush off easily. After stripping, I bundled the plants with some leftover twist ties and hung them off some spare tie-down straps. There was no reason to invest anything in this temporary setup so I made do with what I had laying around. The method worked fairly well, and seemed to allow for good air circulation. I will probably uses cables or rope next year fixed to the trusses on the new barn. Air circulation is key, so I will need to figure out how to maximize it.
After about a month in the greenhouse, I snipped the stems and the roots and moved the bulbs into these totes that I had laying around. This turned out to be a bit of a mistake as there wasn't good airflow in the totes and I got some surface mold on some of the bulbs near the center. Luckily, the mold is just indeed surface mold and it's not the "bad" mold that can destroy a garlic crop.
I have been very careful to record as much data as possible on the garlic at each step, so I have good data on yield for this year. Even with the rust, our yield is better than my initial conservative goal of yielding four times the amount planted. The softneck varieties yielded the most, with the Silver White yielding a whopping 119.5 lbs for the 9 lbs planted (the difference between purchased and planted is the weight of the wrappers on the head and the weight of the puny cloves that I sorted out last fall). The Romanian Red hardneck yielded a respectable 53.5 lbs. The TF mongrel were from seed we'd saved from some garlic we purchased at the local co=op in fall of 2013 and harvested in 2014. The plants were puny and the yield was not that great either. Although I didn't realize it at the time, most of the TF mongrel was a hardneck variety and the cloves were fairly puny compared to the other hardneck varieties we planted in 2014. Puny cloves equal puny plants which equal puny yields. It definitely pays to plant the biggest cloves, and part of the challenge in planting this year's seed is to make sure we are planting large enough cloves. Once I start breaking heads apart in a few more weeks, I'll figure out the "break even point" on clove weight so that I can maintain and even grow yields over the coming years. I want to ensure that the average number of cloves per pound that I plant this year is not smaller than what we started with last year.
Once we noticed the mold problem last week, I quickly ordered a lot of 100 mesh bags, moved the bulbs to the bags, and moved everything into the new barn (!). I've got a fan going on the bulbs and everything seems to be much better now. I'll definitely be moving bulbs immediately into bags next year. The surface mold isn't a big deal to me, but I absolutely can't sell bulbs with any mold. It is imperative that our seed be as close to perfect as possible, and I think I have a method in place to achieve that in 2016.
Lastly, we're going to be applying for a Value Added Producer Grant next year to help us make some investments in clove processing. We're going to have some bulbs that just aren't salable, because of small size, damage, or surface staining, and we'll always have some puny cloves left over after splitting the bulbs for planting. We want to find a way to sell that garlic in a form that can be the most profitable, and we're thinking about doing some sort of canned crushed garlic, garlic pesto, or similar culinary product. We'll need access to a certified organic commercial kitchen and will need to make investments in equipment, especially a clove peeler (for example). We want to ensure the highest quality garlic seed possible to our customers, so we know there will be a lot of garlic that doesn't make the cut and we want to be ready to make use of it. This year will be a bit of a test to get an idea what we can expect, as I'm going to break apart all 351 lbs of garlic and take weight measurements of individual cloves and their individual bulbs to get a thorough understanding of that relationship for each of the varieties.
All in all, with the stress and preoccupation of the fire and rebuilding to deal with this year, I'm fairly happy with how the garlic turned out, and I feel optimistic that we can grow this aspect of our business in the years to come.
All in all, with the stress and preoccupation of the fire and rebuilding to deal with this year, I'm fairly happy with how the garlic turned out, and I feel optimistic that we can grow this aspect of our business in the years to come.
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