Final Harvest Days

Garlic Marketing Strategy

Local garlic growers and vendors in Ontario tend to undervalue their product.



The areas where there is room for improvement and which I plan to address:

• Garlic is sold by the pound, like a commodity;


• Vendors often don't know the variety of garlic they are growing;


• There is limited or no information on the characteristics of various varieties, such as taste, and the culinary dish a particular variety is best served in;


• There are other profit making areas connected to garlic, to be researched

In 2011 I'll do a limited sale of garlic, to test the market. I'll also refine the harvest and planting methods, and test using a more mechanized approach. Most of the 10,000 plants planted this year will be replanted in 2011 - approximately 5 cloves per bulb, giving me 50,000 cloves to plant in 2011. In 2012 I'll make more sales, based on what I learn in 2011. I also plan to plant thousands of garlic bulbils in 2011.

Garlic bulbils are garlic seeds produced from the garlic scape. They are disease free and produce a more robust flavour. But they take 1-3 years to produce a mature bulb.

Ninety-five Hundredth Garlic Planting

This is my own garlic crop of 9,500 cloves, separate from Whole Circle's garlic. It includes the 1,100 plants I grew at Farmstart last year, and harvested this past summer, plus, assorted varieties from other sources.

Many thanks to Paul Pospisil, the "Garlic Guru," and Editor of the Garlic Newsletter; and Bob Litke from Seeds of Diversity and Warren Ham of August Harvest for their garlic donations; Matthew Bulmer for giving me space to grow garlic; and Johann and Maggie and Abhi at Whole Circle for giving me land in the back garden; and Daniel Hoffman of Cutting Veg for advice. And Deborah for her unbending encouragement.

More later on my plans to develop a garlic marketing strategy.


























Whole Circle colleagues Heather, Andrew and Yana helped plant almost 10,000 cloves in the past week. I'll plant another 1,000 cloves at friend Matthew Bulmer's farm in Puslinch - I want to compare how they grow in his more sandy soil.