We want to grow garlic, lots of garlic. And we need you to help us!
On a trip to any random grocery store in America you typically see just one variety of garlic. You know the one, it comes with two bulbs in a little plastic shrink-wrapped box. Well, as it turns out there are actually over six hundred varieties of garlic cultivated around the world today. In celebration of this incredible diversity, Slow Food St. Louis has brought over two hundred of those varieties to our fair city. In order to achieve local cultivation of so much garlic, we need the help of farmers, gardeners, schools and anyone with an interest and a soil plot.
Our goals are to create a shared harvest, to expand the local biodiversity of garlic that is grown and consumed in our region, and to build the capacity for local farms to meet the garlic needs of St. Louis. Smaller growers of successful varieties will keep some garlic for themselves and share some with other growers for future annual harvests. We will work with larger- scale growers to find markets for selling garlic and build up the capacity for St. Louis to produce a higher percentage of the garlic it consumes.
In 2019, Missouri and Illinois had a very wet spring. This caused much of the garlic to fail by molding. Then it was dry for five weeks and the surviving garlic did not increase in size. Nevertheless, almost eight pounds of garlic were returned to us. In addition to the eight pounds, we purchased forty pounds of garlic from Flourish Farm and Dang Food Produce Farm.
We passed out garlic to thirty-nine individuals, two schools and three community gardens. This year we also started a seed bank. We distributed eleven varieties of garlic to farmers Eric and Crystal Stevens (Flourish Farm in Godfrey, IL) and farmer Jason Gerhardt (Confluence Farms in North City, MO). The goal of the seed bank is to concentrate on varieties that do best in our area. This is intended to give us a steady supply of garlic each year to supply the Garlic Project.
This year, we have already passed out garlic to 90 participants. As always, the garlic is free and available to anyone who would like to grow it. We ask only that if you have a successful harvest that you return two bulbs for every bulb you are given. The Garlic Project is no longer accepting applicants as we have exhausted our supply but we will have more garlic to pass out next fall.
Tips On Growing And Harvesting Garlic
How To Plant, Grow and Harvest Garlic
