By Mike

This year started off really well for our garlic. It was a fairly early but very dry spring. Fortunately with the straw mulch in place the garlic plots stay nice and moist. The mulch was pushed away in early May to allow more sunlight on the emerging plants. In mid-May we got a 25 degree frost. This was a good opportunity to see that even though the garlic had 1 to 3 leaves, it was unfazed by these temperatures. In early July we picked the scapes off the plants and were able to enjoy the seasonal delicacy and sell the rest. We harvested the garlic from July 31-Aug 1; a week later than last year, even though the plants had nearly a month more growing season this year.

The garlic is now safe and sound and ready for eating. (and almost gone!) This year we grew 8 varieties. We had Chesnok Red, Georgia Chrystal, Georgia Fire, German Extra Hardy, Korean Mountain, Leningrad, Music, and Russian Red. For a more detailed variety and flavor description, and availability, see our website here.

This year we were able to see the importance of garlic seed selection. For some varieties, we had planted all our available cloves. Winter survival was never an issue, even with the smallest cloves. Overall we had a 91% survival rate, which is good considering we had 4 new seed sources and it takes several years for garlic to acclimate to a new environment. The issue with planting all the cloves was that we had a wide range of harvested bulb sizes this year. We sorted by size for seed, culinary bulbs and bulk. Overall, our bulb size was quite a bit larger than what we had planted last year so we were excited about that. Some garlic, especially the Georgia Crystal was exceptionally large.

We have sold most of the garlic we set aside to sell, as well as donated some to the local food bank and the Culinary Club in Carrington. Quite a bit from each variety was also reserved to increase our seed supply for this fall. We are hoping to double our garlic quantities grown for next year and our careful selection of seed stock should mean larger bulbs for next years’ harvest. More updates as we start taste testing this year.

Garlic profiles:

Chesnok Red
Family – Purple Stripe
Flavor – Sweet, hot
Clove size – Small-Med
Description – bright red cloves, with many cloves per bulb. Good all-around garlic that tends to retain more flavor through cooking than other varieties. A staple variety for garlic lovers.
Status: In Stock

Georgia Crystal
Family – Porcelain
Flavor – Hot, with good secondary flavor
Clove size – Extra large
Description – This is our biggest variety, with 4-6 great sized cloves per bulb. The initial taste is hot but it turns to a nice garlic flavor after a second or so. It gets a buttery flavor when roasted.
Status: sold out

Georgia Fire
Family – Porcelain
Flavor – Very Hot
Clove Size – Medium-large
Description – Hot initial flavor, with an even hotter finish, good for salsa or other raw uses. It has a more mild (and to many, more pleasing) flavor after roasting.
Status: sold out

German Extra Hardy
Family – Porcelain
Flavor – Hot and complex
Clove size – Large
Description – This generally has 4 nice size cloves per head. The flavor represents a typical style for a porcelain variety, with a fair amount of initial hotness followed by a more mellow flavor. Great all-purpose garlic.
Status: In Stock

Korean Mountain
Family – Asiatic
Flavor – Mild start, with very strong but pleasing secondary flavor
Clove size – Large
Description – This garlic is unique in our lineup in that its flavor really doesn’t kick in for 1-2 seconds. At that point its flavor is also a unique and complex mixture.
Status: sold out

Leningrad
Family – Porcelain
Flavor – Hot and complex, balanced
Clove size – Large
Description – While this garlic still has a hot start, it is milder than many of our other porcelain varieties, but it has a richer flavor than our other porcelains too.
Status: sold out

Music
Family – Porcelain
Flavor – Mild, Sweet
Clove size – Medium-Large
Description – This is our mildest garlic variety as far as initial burn. Because of that, you can pick up on other flavor ‘notes’ that are masked in other varieties. Generally 4 cloves per head. Good all-purpose variety
Status: In Stock

Russian Red
Family – Rocambole
Flavor – Sweet and complex, strong garlic flavor
Clove size – Medium-large
Description – While we enjoy the flavor of all our garlics, this is a personal favorite. While it’s still initially hot, it develops into a very nice, tangy sensation. Fairly short storage life (use within 3 months).
Status: sold out

By Lindsay

When most people think of western North Dakota they think of oil, cattle, badlands and-did I mention-oil. Few associate the western edge of the state with horticulture and local foods. However, Sarah the intern and I got a glimpse of the local food scene when we traveled west for a business trip/family visit.

We loaded up the car with garlic & kids and set out. The four hour drive to my parent’s house near Watford City took six and Sarah discovered how much fun it is to travel with children. I was always told to make my trip count and we did just that-picking up an antique sink for the granary along the way that I had found for sale on Bisman.  

The main purpose of the trip was to volunteer for hops harvest at the Williston Research Extension Center (and to see my family of course!) We left bright and early the morning after our arrival. The traffic from Watford City to Williston was not bad at all with the new bypasses in place around Watford and Alexander. What we found when we got there was an oasis of green in an otherwise arid region-the Williston Research Extension Center.

It is here that Kyla & Kim conduct research on some of North Dakota’s lesser known crops-grapes, onions, vegetables, hops. We were there to harvest hops but enjoyed snooping (and sampling) some of the other research they have going on. Sadly, produce theft is a big problem for them. They GIVE away a lot of produce after they have collected data on it but there are people that insist on taking it before it can be measured and evaluated. This is unfortunate as the results of their research are important to growers and gardeners in the state. In fact, I grabbed one of their research reports and look forward to reading it this winter when I am making decisions about what crops and varieties to plant in the future. I bet you probably didn’t know about the horticultural research they do there but it is really a public service and an asset and I encourage you to check it out.

The hopyard at WREC is part of a variety trial that started last year. Beings they have so many hops plants, they purchased a mechanical harvester. Part of my motive for volunteering was to see the machine and how it works as we intend to purchase a harvester and I wanted to see this model in action.

The bines we were to harvest that day had already been taken down at the tops. The trellises there stand about 20’ tall. You have to cut the bines off at the ground to send them through the harvester, which we did as we went. The hops harvester has only been produced a couple of years now so there were a few kinks I am sure they are working out. However, considering the alternative is hand picking, the machine is pretty great. Any time you start to mechanize there will be pros and cons.

The bines get hung on these hooks that are attached to a chain that pulls them through the harvester. This chain runs on a hydraulic motor and the speed is adjustable. We kept it on the slowest possible speed as that seemed to get the most cones off without damage. The rest of the machine runs off the PTO. One problem we noticed was there is a blower that’s speed does not appear to be adjustable without speeding up the whole thing-including the wire cylinders that spin to knock the hops off the bines. If you were handy you could probably put this onto its own motor so you could adjust it and possibly eliminate some of the leaf garbage that gets in with the cones. There were also a few places where the cones were bouncing onto the ground but this could easily be fixed by adding some additional guards. It took around 3 minutes to send one bine through the harvester and two people could run it. Each bine had a few cones still clinging to it that needed to be picked by hand. There was a fair amount of leaves mixed in with the cones that we had to pick out later. However, Kyla said that this problem has been improved on their newer model. It is one thing to see a machine on a website or video but I really feel like I have a better understanding of the machine now, its pros and cons, and how it works.

Kyla joined us for lunch at the Williston Brewing Company. They had a screaming deal of $1 beers-basically any beer craft, bottle, draft was $1. Too bad there was more work to do so we had to stick to one beer. I tried a fresh hop beer in honor of my first harvest. Oh yeah-did I mention-the food was good too.

The second item on the agenda was to market some of our garlic and other products in Watford City. It is my hometown and it is fun to sell my stuff to friends, family, and acquaintances “back home.” I had some deliveries to make and we set up shop at the farmers market. They have a more informal one in the bank parking lot on Thursdays. I heard rumors of some new ideas being thrown around for a farmers market in Watford City-like making it more of an event at the Heritage Park perhaps-an idea that would
be super cool.

There were five vendors there. A couple of elderly ladies with some baked goods (I had to buy some pumpkin bread and cookies), a guy that convinced me that chard is the new kale, Tom with his famous hot mix (he sells  over 200 jars a year), some ladies with jellies and pickles, and us. OK so I bought something from everyone else there-and I enjoyed it. A steady stream of customers cleaned out much of our garlic, all of the potatoes we brought along, most of our chokecherry syrup, and a few bags of onions. One guy happened to be a plumber and remarked on the antique sink we had in the back of our vehicle-he climbed right in and gave me some good info and history of it. So glad I made my trip count! We were happy with our sales and I enjoyed visiting with people I haven’t seen in many years.

We learned a lot about the local food scene in Western ND on our short trip to the not-so-wild west, like how to mechanically harvest hops and that there are people out there just like us bringing local foods to their hungry customers.