Sunday, October 24, 2010

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.