There’s no denying it. We’re growing garlic here because our after dinner conversations always seemed to end up discussing garlic. Nineteen years ago, I said, “Let’s give it a go and grow some.” And here we are planning our 2026 garlic crop.
We knew we had the ideal climate and soil type for producing top-quality natural garlic. And the long-standing Lucerne paddock in front of the house had just the right nutritional history for the job.
Garlic does best when it’s grown through a cold winter and finished off in warm weather. A typical temperate crop. It relies on clear seasonal messages to move from its dormant stage to its growing stage, and then to its reproductive stage. As long as there’s moist soil, good drainage and nutrition, it will do very well through a cold winter.
To create the perfect bulb of garlic, a slow, steady, natural pace is needed. It just should not be artificially pushed along with chemical additives and artificial fertilisers.
Organic garlic is a very labour-intensive crop.
Australia has been swamped by inferior imported garlic, and thirty or more years ago, the local garlic industry dramatically declined – it’s the second most significant decline of an Australian horticultural industry after tobacco (perhaps no significant loss). But unlike tobacco, quality garlic is very good for you. Poor quality garlic is not!
Taste Patrice Newell’s ‘glamour garlic’, alongside the cheap Imported (mainly Chinese) offerings, and you’ll reach the same conclusion. Yes, it costs more. But it provides much more in quality, flavour and nutrition.
Here’s the advice of the Australian Garlic Association when we started:
Food growing standards and regulations are inferior in China to Australia’s.
All imported garlic must, by Australian quarantine regulations, be fumigated with methyl bromide. This is to ensure Australia remains free of the 101 bugs and diseases found in overseas. Methyl bromide is a seriously dangerous, broad-spectrum, highly toxic sterility agent. As well as being a particularly hazardous chemical for agricultural workers to handle, its acceptable consumer safety credentials have been withdrawn in numerous countries, industries, and crops over the last couple of decades.
Imported garlic may be subjected to cold and over-storage and treated with growth inhibitors to prevent sprouting.
Please don’t buy imported garlic!
Our Garlic Planting Calender
After we finish with one crop and tidy up the paddock, removing irrigation infrastructures, the soil will rest, and we move on to the following year’s site.
Soil preparations began two years ago with deep ripping, green manure crops, and slashing.
Meanwhile, Phillip and the team begin breaking up garlic bulbs. We also have a mechanical machine that helps. It can take some weeks to break the garlic up and weigh the cloves. 100kg of cloves can provide 1 tonne of garlic if the garlic reaches its full potential.
In early March, new irrigation drip tape is laid out, and the paddocked marked up. Three rows to a bed, furrows in between.
Each year, we’ve experimented with mulch. Sometimes we plant and put a lot of mulch straight on top, and the garlic shoots through. Other times, we let the garlic sprout, use a mechanical weeder while the garlic is small, hand weed where necessary, and then mulch. Weeds do grow through mulch, and if it’s too thick, it will block up the harvester.
We like to start planting the last week in March and finish within a month. Each year is different, and in 2025, when it rained so much, we were constantly thwarted. Too wet to plant, then too wet to weed by hand or machine; when we could, it was slow going, damaging the crop in places, too. The novice garlic weeder is often challenged in differentiating a thin garlic shoot from a grass weed.
For the next six months, we visit the crop most days and weed when needed. Come September, the crop is enthusiastically irrigated, so the bulbs fill out. By October, we’ll be checking the BOM regularly because we plan to start harvesting on October 28. We need to stop irrigating as soon as we see the bulbs fully developed underground, and hope the soil dries a little, to make harvesting easier. If heavy rain is likely, we may harvest the crop earlier. If too much rain falls at harvest time, much of the purple colour is lost, the inner skins can brown, and the crop takes longer to cure.
We use a harvesting machine that bunches the garlic. It’s hung in the shed to cure. When the sheds are full, we will clip the garlic and place it in bins with fans on top.
By the second week in November, the whole crop is out of the ground.
The most important thing next is air circulation.
Two weeks of dry, windy weather can cure garlic, but usually it’s longer. In a wet year, it took nearly six weeks for the biggest bulbs.
Then we clip the garlic ready to pack.
Because we’re posting garlic in boxes, we need it to be fully cured.
When you receive your garlic, please open the box immediately and check it.
Ensure the garlic is well ventilated in your home.
By the time you receive your garlic in December or January, it’s been loved on the farm for almost a year.
Many people tell me they leave their garlic in the box.