DISPATCHES FROM THE FARM

Well, the garlic is going 'gang busters' and is looking plump and juicy and nearing time for harvest in the next few weeks...we are sooo excited! There's anticipation for the garlic's arrival building from many corners...The other day a friend told me she is giving her highly reputed basil pesto to some close friends as an engagement gift BUT they will have to wait until the new season's Angelica Organic Farm gorgeous gourmet garlic is available because she said "it's not worth using anything else!" - thank you darling we appreciate your loyalty and spruiking very much :)

  

As rocambole garlic nears harvest time, it shoots up flower heads, known as scapes, which quickly become tightly coiled 1-3 times round (not just curved or arched). Most garlic growers cut these stalks off  once they've curled, to prevent the garlic bulbs from being deprived of precious nutrients and energy needed to maximise bulb growth and therefore clove size. The rationale is that if the scapes are left intact they receive the nutrients for growth and rob the garlic bulbs. We will soon be 'popping the tops' of our rocambole garlic. Not all garlic growers agree there is a need to do this but from our experience so far it works for us and from our research it seems what works best for individual farms is varied and may largely depend on specific climatic factors effected by different land elevations and field aspects for example. We are always carrying out little experiments though to test for better ways of doing anything on the farm...

  

Tim just finished setting up the irrigation system for the beloved garlic. Towards the end of the garlic growing season we can't count on continuing rainfall and one of the worst things you can let happen to garlic is to let it dry out too rapidly before it's nearly time to harvest, stunting it's bulb growth, causing premature harvesting and poor storage capacity after harvest. However, you never want to water-log the soil, which reduces air as well as leeching out nutrients and around harvest time can generate diseases, moulds, rotting and prevent proper curing of the garlic. Neither waterlogged or dry soils are conducive to the beneficial micro-organisms and you just need the right balance of air and water in the soil to activate important chemical and physical processes.   We use drip irrigation at this time of the year because it enables us to maintain adequate soil moisture where it's needed, in the root zone, without water-logging the topsoil, reducing the aforementioned risks. Our last irrigation is a week or so out from harvesting, depending on the local climate and/or rainfall.

We are very much looking forward to seeing everyone again at the markets, customers and fellow stallholders.

Hope to see you there soon!

Just after we plant the new garlic seed stock, our practice has been to mulch, using organic oaten hay. We mulch for a few main reasons: i) To suppress weeds  ii) To moderate soil temperature, regardless of whether it's mid winter and below 0 over night or late spring  and 30 deg. mid afternoon iii) To moderate soil moisture, especially to conserve soil moisture during late spring when we don't get much rain and are irrigating prior to harvest time. The farming tradition of mulching garlic stems from the extreme northern winter climates, from where garlic originated and is still grown a lot. 

                                  

However, each season, we are finding that a lot of weeds grow out of the mulch itself (oat sprouts plus from weed seeds in the hay), so we think we will experiment with not mulching some areas of next season's garlic to see how the garlic (and weed growth!) fairs without it and to ascertain whether the expense and work involved in mulching is truly necessary to maintain the excellence we strive to produce.

Garlic has shallow roots compared to many plants and so doesn't respond well to competition for available nutrients and water from weeds.  We find our winters don't allow for much weed growth until towards the end when the weeds seem to 'feel' spring coming as daylight extends and then they grow like crazy within no time. Recently, as soon as the rain had eased up enough, we invested 3 very full days in weeding this years garlic crop. Tim along with a small team of truly fantastic casual farm workers thoroughly hand weeded every bed of garlic. Hand weeding is the only really effective way to weed garlic and to guarantee the growing garlic roots don't get damaged in the process. Minimising weeds helps ensure good sized, healthy garlic bulbs and therefore cloves.