Growing Great Garlic: The Definitive Guide for Organic Gardeners and Small Farmers

by Ron L. Engeland

Paperback, 1995

Status

Available

Call number

635.26 ENG

Genres

Collection

Your library

Publication

Filaree Productions (1995), 228 pages

Description

The first garlic book written specifically for organic gardeners and small-scale farmers Growing Great Garlic is the definitive grower's guide written by a small scale farmer who makes his living growing over 200 strains of garlic. Commercial growers will want to consult this book regularly. The author tells us: which strains to plant when to fertilize when to plant when to prune flower stalks how to plant when to harvest Plus, how to store, market, and process the crop Growing Great Garlic makes a genuine contribution in the field of garlic classification that will help the public recognize several distinct varietal types of garlic.

User reviews

LibraryThing member jjmcgaffey

A very good, very useful book - for someone intending to start a garlic farm. It's really _not_ aimed at gardeners, or anyone without a few acres to devote to garlic. At one point he discusses the major shift in time and effort that comes between dealing with a crop of "only" 1,500 pounds, and

dealing with a crop of a ton or more. Yeah...my harvest _might_ hit ten pounds, if I'm lucky...and all the marketing bits near the end are kind of pointless. Though I suppose some of it could apply to other things than garlic or even produce. All that said - there's some interesting info on varieties of garlic (which differ a _lot_ - much more than people who mostly buy garlic in supermarkets would believe), info on growing methods (irrigation, mulch, storage), quite a lot about pests and diseases (though they all seem to start with yellowing leaves - as does maturity. Hmmm). Also very interesting stuff about the origin of garlic and what it evolved to want, though none of the growing stuff seems to reflect that. It's really an arid-climate plant, and should grow well in very sandy soil, because that's basically what there is in Afghanistan and the rest of the region it comes from. Very hot summers, very cold winters. And then the discussion of how to grow big, solid bulbs - keep it irrigated but not too much, let it dry at the end of the season; soft soils that don't cling; lots of green manure (fertilizer crops); etc. And again, the varieties of garlics - the ones that grow 'flower'-heads and the ones that don't (softnecks - what most of us are used to) and how they differ in growth, requirements, harvest time, storage, and flavor. There's quite a bit of good info about garlics in general; less about how to grow them in a small garden or in pots; and a lot about small farming and what farming and marketing require, which is valuable info but not to me. So for me, this is only a three-star book. I'll try to extract what's useful out of it and pass it on, maybe to someone who is thinking about starting a garlic farm (if I'm lucky enough to find such a someone).

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