WHY IS B.C. GARLIC SO DARN GOOD!
Garlic has been part of the staple diet of people literally around the world for millennia – and
we eat lots of it – around 80 billion pounds of home and commercial production, which works
out to 10 pounds per person per year across the planet. Over the centuries, many different
types of garlic have naturally hybridized creating a plethora of varieties, each one having
adapted to growing conditions and light. Garlic, being an allium (related to leeks and onions) is
light-sensitive, (phototropic) and the amount of light controls when it grows, and how long it
takes to mature.
There are two basic types of garlic – softneck and hardneck – the difference being that
hardneck has a central shaft growing up the centre of the plant that remains rigid, with cloves
forming around it, while softneck varieties don’t have that central shaft.
WHY IS BC GARLIC SO DAMN GOOD! – July 24th 2015
Without going into too much detail, softneck varieties produce better in warmer countries,
while hardneck is hardier and generally performs better in northern areas. Varieties you may
recognize like Russian Red, White Music, etc. are traditionally found in Northern Europe,
Canada and as far south as southern Europe where it is grown at higher elevations. You will
also find hardneck growing in Chile.
Not that we don’t grow softneck varieties in Canada – some varieties have naturalized to colder
weather.
WHY IS BC GARLIC SO DAMN GOOD! – July 24th 2015
And don’t put too much into the names – many regions,
especially France, have actually trademarked some
varietal names, and if you grow them outside the region,
you can’t use that name – the same protectionism you
would find with other products – you can only call liquor
from Agave as Tequilla if its produced in just 4 states in
Mexico, or ‘Parmesan like cheese’ if it’s not grown in
Italy. Very often, growers will just make up names if
they don’t know for sure what variety they are actually
growing.
A vast majority of the world’s garlic is grown in China –
80% of all the commercial production. In more southern
areas, like China or Mexico, softneck varieties take
about 6 months to grow and then produce small cloves, usually in two or even three layers –
those pesky little cloves that often seem to be more trouble than they are worth – but
production values are high when measured by the pound.
There are also many commercial production methods. One farmer can grow 100 hectares of
garlic with virtually no labour. There are machines that literally shoot garlic into the soil, which
is then irrigated with chemical or organic solutions mixed into the water, machine harvested
and sized, and the only labour required is to cull out heads that have been damaged and close
up the boxes. That’s not the way we do it in B.C.
Each clove in a head of garlic is a seed. Each clove is planted several inches from each other,
and several inches deep in the soil, and very importantly, top up and bottom down. Because of
our climate, garlic is traditionally planted in early to mid-October in the Interior and a few
weeks later on the Coast. That’s not to say it can’t be planted early in the spring, but
production will be smaller. We have to plant it that early before the ground freezes. During the
long winter, and under snow for many months in the Interior, it develops a great root structure
extending 3 or 4 inches deeper into the soil. The green plants typically emerge during March,
and if there’s a heavy snowpack, they can sometimes push themselves up through lingering
snow. Even several inches down each clove can tell when the days are getting longer and starts
its growth cycle and as the soil warms it speeds up quickly. Garlic doesn’t actually start to
produce its bulb until 6 weeks before it starts to mature and then die. Hardneck varieties
produce a scape, where the center stalk shoots up and creates the beginning of a flower.
Hardneck garlic, perhaps attuned to colder climates has 3 ways to reproduce itself. The scape
which starts out curly straightens out, reaching for the sun and forms a flower which in turn
WHY IS BC GARLIC SO DAMN GOOD! – July 24th 2015
produces dozens if not over a hundred seeds. Below the flower, at the top of the stalk, there is
also a circle of up to 15 very small cloves. This seed head is four to five feet above the ground.
If you don’t cut the stalk off when it starts off as a curly scape the plant will put its resources
into producing both seeds and small cloves, and won’t produce a bulb of any meaningful size.
Once you’ve cut off the seed head the plant goes into survival mode, knowing its only chance to
reproduce now is to create a large bulb with many cloves.
So, back to the reason you are reading this – our garlic, unlike garlic grown in the south has 6
long months to produce a vigorous root system, yet only has 4-6 weeks to produce a bulb – and
growth in that period is very fast – that large root system allows the plant to pull up lots of
water and nutrients to create big bulbs. There is no time for it to produce internal and external
cloves – so expect to see between 4 and 6 much larger cloves around the center stalk, with no
bothersome little ones hiding behind them. Because the plants know that the bulb and its
cloves would naturally sit in the soil from the end of July until the fall when they would then
start the growing cycle over (if they weren’t harvested,) they naturally produce lots of spicy oil
to protect them from rotting between July and October.
Ultimately we end up with hot, spicy, oily garlic with very large cloves – the opposite of bland,
small cloves you will find on commercial garlic grown in Mexico or China.
Growers in BC have to put far more labour into a
good garlic crop, because the growth cycle, from
planting to harvest and curing takes 9-10 months,
which includes a lot more weeding and watering,
plus walking the field every couple of days to cut
off scapes, because every scape (seed stalk) that
goes un-noticed means a garlic plant that is
wasted.
So when you see BC organic garlic on the shelf for
4 times the price of conventional commercially
produced garlic from southern climes, you know
you are getting big cloves that are easy to peel
and chop, and that are much more ‘garlicky’. As
the saying goes: ‘you get what you pay for!’
WHY IS BC GARLIC SO DAMN GOOD! – July 24th 2015