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Growing Great Garlic in Minnesota

Jerry Ford is Network Coordinator for the Sustainable Farming Assn of MN, Co-Director of the MN Premium Garlic Project, Director of the MN Garlic Festival, and one of the owners of Living Song Farm near Howard Lake MN.

He’s coming to Orr on September 8th to present a workshop called “Growing Great Garlic in MN” as part of the 2018 Sustainability and Homesteading Expo.

We asked Jerry if it is hard to grow great garlic in Minnesota.

“Well,” he said, “If it was hard, I wouldn’t be able to do it. If you do certain things right, then it’s a crop that you will learn to love to grow, and it’s pretty fool-proof. There’s always caveats to that, having to do with those things like weather…”

“The MN Premium Garlic Project is funded by the MN Dept of Agriculture through what is called a specialty crops grant, to bring to farmers new specialty-type crops that they can add to their repertoire to improve their resiliency and profitability. We are training farmers to grow these specialty crops and we work with the public and the markets to increase demand and knowledge about those crops. The Department of Ag decided that garlic was one of those things that more farmers could be producing in MN.”

There are some kinds of garlic that are better to grow in MN’s climate than others. “There are well over 100 different varieties of garlic that are grown throughout the world and in MN we are growing at least 50 different varieties of garlic, both the gardeners and the market growers. There are northern varieties of garlic, and the beauty of them is that they’re the heirloom stuff. Most people think that garlic is a tropical plant. It’s not. It was originally grown in northern, very cold climates. There’s a fair amount of garlic grown in Siberia, and north of you folks on up into Canada; there are growers up there. And these northern garlics are also—and this is not just my opinion—better. They are tastier, hardier, produce bigger cloves; chefs love them.”

The varieties taste different from each other. “It’s a little bit like—and I get in trouble for doing this—but comparing it to fine wines. Every year it’s different. Depending on the growing conditions, the garlic will have different characteristics. And there are some chefs and people with hipper taste buds than my own who can distinguish the differences. It’s almost like we’re getting into vintage garlics. Of course, we don’t bottle it and store it for many years, but yes, the northern garlics tend to have a reputation for being ‘milder in the burn’—that initial just-make-you smack-your-lips sort of burn that you get from the garlic—and richer in what we call ‘garlicness;’ the rich sort of flavor that you’re really going after with the garlic. So the northern ones that we grow here tend to accentuate that ‘garlicness’ more.

“We thought at first that garlic was going to be an uphill battle in Minnesota. When I first started growing it here 16 years ago, all my neighbors were like, ‘Well you know these Scandinavians, they don’t eat garlic.’ And it turned out that it was actually just Minnesotans who didn’t eat garlic. There’s a garlic festival in Finland…and actually it’s quite a thing in Norway and Sweden. So we had some training to do with people here, but now it’s just taken off. And we’re actually at the point where the demand for MN garlic—locally grown garlic—is greater than the supply.”

Jerry plans to structure his workshop in Orr for home gardeners, master gardeners and possibly a few market gardeners. He wants especially to reach out to home gardeners. “The gardeners are one of the great markets for professional garlic growers. We want you to buy the seed locally. It’s to your advantage. And that’s one of the things that growers need to know. If you’re buying seed from California or China or Spain—which is where the bulk of the garlic comes from that you see in the grocery stores—it’s not acclimated to our climate. And if you try to grow that, you’re really fighting a losing fight. If you grow from someone who’s already growing here, then that garlic is already acclimated, and it’s better stuff anyway. So what I like to approach is the three things that gardeners do wrong with garlic: they have to do with the wrong seed, the wrong time, and the wrong place. Beyond that, you need to come to the class!”

The 2018 Sustainability and Homesteading Expo is September 8th, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Some of the other speakers at the Expo include Jeff Purdy (Intro to Solar), Marshall Helmberger (Build a Solar Greenhouse), and Jackie Clay Atkinson (Fearless Pressure Canning). Pre-registration is recommended for the classes above (including Growing Great Garlic). There are also a number of free classes at the expo. To register, send a check ($10 per class, no cash) to Orr Center, PO Box 322, Orr MN 55771.

You can find out how Jerry Ford became a grower and ambassador for garlic, and learn about the MN Garlic Festival in the full interview below.

Maggie is a rural public radio guru; someone who can get you through both minor jams and near catastrophes and still come out ahead of the game. She pens our grants, reports to the Board of Directors and helps guide our station into the dawn of a new era. Maggie is a locavore to the max (as evidenced on Wednesday mornings), brings in months’ worth of kale each fall, has heat on in her office 12 months a year, and drinks coffee out of a plastic 1987 KAXE mug every day. Doting parents and grandparents, she and her husband Dennis live in the asphalt jungle of East Nary.