Garlic is a classic overwinter crop, and we grow both green garlic and hardneck varieties here at the Farm on Central. We’ve tried growing garlic both standalone and intercropped, and you can probably guess the results…
We get the best garlic when we intercrop with strawberries!
Our strawberry pickers think the fields look a little bit strange 😂
But the garlic doesn’t get in the way of picking, so we’re sticking with it!
Why intercrop garlic with strawberries?
👉 Saves on space. Garlic grows vertically, while strawberries will spread out but stay low to the ground. Instead of planting each separately, you can save a lot of field space when you plant the two together, because they won’t interfere with each other.
👉 Garlic props up the rowcover. We start our strawberries in the fall and overwinter them under row covers. While garlic doesn’t technically need row covers, the cover pushes the garlic a bit and and gives us a small jump on the season. More importantly, the garlic keeps the row cover up off the strawberries and protects the flowers a little bit better.
👉 Higher garlic yield. When intercropping, we plant our garlic in single rows, so the plants actually have more space than if we did a full garlic bed. We use 6” spacing for hardneck varieties and 1’ spacing for green garlic. Because the strawberries require a lot of moisture and fertilizer, the garlic plants end up getting a lot more attention, water and nutrition compared to when we plant them separately. Altogether, we feel that it’s well worth the little bit of extra work.
How do we sell garlic?
As one of the most commonly used seasonings, we both sell garlic fresh and use it as an ingredient in many of our food products.
If you’re wondering how to make garlic profitable, here are a few ideas to get you started!
- Sell it fresh, with full cloves up for grabs.
- Good ole’ garlic salt.
- Make honey infused garlic, which we sell as both a dressing base and a natural wellness product.
- Black garlic cloves (aged).
- In foods, like garlic scape pesto.
Garlic is also a key ingredient in our fire ciders, so that’s another way our garlic makes it into the store. Between fire ciders, pesto, salsa, and other foods that we make here at the Farm on Central, we actually end up using a lot of the garlic we grow.
But even if you don’t make any foods, you can still sell garlic fresh, dried, ground, or infused…you can’t go wrong!
