Growing Great Garlic Webinar (Fall 2019)

Transcript: And Welcome friends to the growing gorgeous garlic and shallot webinar here at fruition seeds. I am so delighted to share with you all of this information basically because these are some of my favorite things to eat on the planet and I love to eat them and share them with people I love. And I’d love to share all this information of how you too can grow so much huge, massive, glorious, gargantuan garlic and shallots in your lives friends. So here we go. And my name is Petra, by the way. I’m Petra Page-Mann. I am a co founder of Fruition Seeds. And I last year we grew over 10,000, garlic and shallot bulbs, all for the seed ideally over 95% of our crop in fact was seed grade, gorgeous, massive, glorious bulbs. So all of these tips I’m about to share with you are absolutely our strategies that we’ve been evolving for decades now. And we continue to learn all kinds of things across the seasons. So stay tuned, grab a piece of paper, grab a pen, snag a snack, and have so much fun. I can’t wait to share with you all of this info and notes you if you haven’t already, download our ebook. It is basically the cliffnotes version and know that I also have created a glorious online course that shares so much more of these details. And you’ll have access to it all year round. So it’s a fantastic resource across the seasons. And one more thing that I’d like to share with you friends is that I grew up in my father’s garden that in fact, is 10 miles that way. And in my father’s garden, we grew garlic and I was always so proud of it. It was so delicious. And here’s the thing. I’m pretty sure it was pretty small because I remember being small myself, or at least smaller than I am now and we would go to the grocery store. And I would think to myself, wow,they grow such big garlic.
And here’s the thing. I’ve never thought that in the last 20 years of my life, I started working on organic farms around the country and around the world. And suddenly I was like, Wow, it’s impressive how small garlic is at the grocery store and how sad because you can so easily grow way larger garlic in your own backyards, friends, even in containers. So I am delighted to share all of this with you and more. So I’m going to leave you the next eight things that I’m going to talk about in the next half hour or so and then I’ll break them down piece by piece. So first you want to plant the right seeds stock, you want to plant them at the right time, you want to have the right soil prep and the right fertility, the right clove orientation when you plan to the right spacing, the right depth and to mulch or not to mulch. The that is the question so Let me break all of those down for you. So first things first, planting the right seed stock.
You reap what you sow. Bigger is better is not a phrase that I love or ever use outside the context of growing shallots and garlic, you want to start start with the very biggest, healthiest cloves and bulbs possible. It’s also a phrase that I use in container gardening. Bigger is definitely better. And those are basically the two ways that bigger is better comes to be true, always. So yes, there’s a direct relationship between the size of both the bu;b and the clove that you plan to have both garlic and shallots and the size of the bulbs that you’ll be harvesting. So the smaller the bulb will only grow so large; a bigger bulb is going to grow that much larger in the same conditions given. So think of it this way. You’re about to invest all of this energy in soil prep fertility; you’re going to plant them you’re going to weed cultivate, feed them next spring and cultivate, and you’re going to cure them. All of this energy, you’re about to invest in your garlic and shallots. And if you just spent a few more dollars, you would be able to harvest that much more. That would amplify your abundance. So yes, it’s totally worth sending a few more dollars and getting seed grade, the biggest, healthiest, most gorgeous garlic, you can and shallots as your seed crop. Emily has a great question. Can I buy garlic from the grocery store? Yes. 
Here’s the thing. I would never do it. But the answer is yes, you technically can, and it will grow. When you buy garlic at the grocery store, you’re buying garlic that is food grade garlic. And the same with shallots. So any garlic grower is growing garlic and their cream of their crop, the best of the best, they’re saving for themselves to replant. That second tier that’s also really large is then their seed stock that they sell to other farms and growers to grow as seed for next season. Anything that’s smaller than that, generally two, two and a half inches or less. That is food grade. that’s small enough, so it’s really not worth the return on growing it. As for garlic, but it’s plenty delicious. Go ahead, eat it. So yes, you can totally plant grocery store garlic, and it’s food grade garlic and it will grow. But will it grow into the biggest, most glorious, gorgeous garlic? It just won’t. It might take a few years to get up to speed. And if you’re willing to do that, by all means, but I highly encourage you just to spend a few more dollars and get serious and organic stock if you can, because organic is just there in the soil being like Yep, I know what to do. I’m not waiting for the manna from heaven of Miracle Grow. Organic garlic can forage in US Soil for those nutrients, all the better.
And they’re not waiting for, you know any herbicides to come along. They’re used to competing with weeds. So yes, organic makes a huge difference for your grandchildren certainly. And even for you short term in your garden in terms of making growing easier whether you organically garden or not. JOHN has an awesome question as well. He asked, Is it true? You’re really sold out of garlic? Ah, it’s true. JOHN, I’m so sorry. Every year we sell out of garlic, and every year, we grow like 150% more garlic. And this year 2019. We sold out earlier than we ever have. And I’m so sorry. So yes, here we are at the end of September and we have no garlic for you to plant in Fall 2019. We’ll have lots more in future years. But I highly recommend. I know you can go online and find any number of sources but I recommend just going to your local Farmers Market finding an organic grower of garlic and asking them if they would share if they would sell you any of their seed stock and make sure that it’s more than two, two and a half inches in diameter is ideal. And yet that is just your best go to because often what you’ll find being sold this time of year online, it may or may not be really the best seed garlic, but your local organic grower that you have a personal relationship with, you’ll likely get that much better result from their garlic and so that is my best recommendation to friends. And another question from Maria do shallots a store as long as garlic and they store even longer shot I’ve actually had a shallot. This is a little Griselle. I bought a few off of we have a bowl of them in our kitchen. This is two years old and it is rock solid. I’m totally confidence totally delicious. And we’re just letting it sit there until it doesn’t look delicious anymore. And then we’re going to make a note of how old it was. I’m guessing it’s going to be three to four years. So yes, shallots, whether the French Grays or this is the Dutch Red style. They are so long story. 
And so that brings me to my next and kind of final piece in this sourcing the right seed stock or like for you, there’s so many different kinds of garlic friends, and there’s even different kinds of shallots as well. So certainly the first filter in the garlic department there are soft neck and there hardnecks, a hard neck garlics and within those there’s over six different types of DNA styles really different kinds of garlic within that. But take a look there first filter is hard neck, soft neck and to make life really super simple. If you want to escape those lovely curling tops that you can pickle. I just love scapes so much. Garlic scape pesto is one of my favorite facts of life. You need a hard neck garlic Take a look at that hard neck in the middle and you’ll find that that means that it’s less about let me not get ahead of myself. Here’s the soft neck. You can see there’s no actual like hard neck in the middle. It’s all just those
papery
wrappers. And so this is what you want to braid. This is like most bare bones selections for yourself. If you want scapes, you want a hard neck garlic; if you want to braid garlic you want a soft neck or like a few other general rules hardneck garlic is generally more hard cold hardy as well. If you’re not getting your soft neck from Fruition Seeds, I recommend you’re more if you’re in zone 5 or colder. Here in the northeast I highly recommend just going with hardneck varieties. Our softneck Ragatusso, super cold hardy really well adapted, but she is an exception. Another thing to keep in mind as far as gross generalizations go hard neck varieties. They generally don’t store as long I think like six, eight, maybe 10 months of storage with the hard neck types. Soft necks on the other hand easily 8, 10, 12 plus months, so you’ll get longer storage. corollary to that hard necks are generally easy to peel right out of the gate. And soft necks are harder to peel, hard necks easier to peel right away; soft next, harder to peel right away but easy to peel as time goes on. Here’s a way to think about it. The clove wrapper around each of those cloves is kind of shrink wrapped around the clove, and it’s more or less tightly shrink wrapped around your hardbacks. That’s why they’re easier to peel. That’s also why they oxidize more quickly and don’t have the storage life of soft necks, which have a more shrink wrapped wrapper around each clove. But as time goes on those bold those clothes are slowly desiccating gently shrinking and so that means that there As time goes on, they’re easier to peel. So generally we eat all of our focus on eating our hard necks before, say, like January, February, and at that point, they’re starting to go softer, at which point, all our soft necks are then starting to peel easier. So it’s kind of this wonderful gradation. And another piece in this how do you choose the right garlic for you department? There’s a lot of different types, and they all taste a little differently. And yes, garlic is garlic is garlic is garlic. That’s what I thought when I was growing up. I was wrong. I growing up here in the western New York Finger Lakes, we have so many wonderful grapes, so many wonderful apples. And I knew from before I really had an apple or agricultural vocabulary that I preferred McCouns over Macintosh way more than even than Empires and I could tell you exactly why I love Jonamacs and I could name you a lot of apps varieties and what I loved about them and Apple was not an Apple was not an apple. And it took me another 15 years to realize that garlic is not garlic is not garlic, there’s a lot of different flavor profiles; some are more spicy, some are more mild, think juice and wine. Some juice has a very like from front to finish very similar flavor and taste where wine has generally a lot more depth complexity and the front of finish is this like evolution. some garlic is more like juice in terms of its flavor. What you get at the beginning is what you get throughout other garlic some more complex, some are more nutty, some are more sulfurous. Some are more medicinal, if you want medicinal garlic, you want the porcelain hard necks, so I’ll go way more into this and are in in the online course as well. And some other resources on our blog so that you can go into these crazy details and we also have a garlic party that will be kind of in the middle. beginning middle of August each year so that you can come to the farm and taste these varieties and have this experience yourself because being able to try 10, 20 different kinds of garlic, maybe it sounds masochist, it’s also divine. So there you have it, finding the right seed stock is a matter of personal taste, depending on whether you want the scape, whether you want to braid it or not all the different flavor profiles, as well as just the core, get the biggest, most beautiful garlic you possibly can friends, if it’s organic, you’re making your life that much easier. 
So number two, right timing. And basically, anytime Halloween to Thanksgiving here in zone 5 anywhere in the northeast is going to be spot on. And here’s why. Here’s our goal. You want to establish the roots of your garlic, the roots of your shallots, but you don’t want their shoots to start to grow. And that’s because you want them to hold the soil to be alive. Which is the roots but as soon as they start to grow that shoot that acts as a straw in the winter desiccating winter winds will be drying moisture up out of that stock out of that clove and that and where incredible cold will not kill garlic desiccating desiccation will drying out will. So you want to be sure that if that you really don’t want to have your garlic greens more than three inches tall by the time the snow is really falling, so that between Halloween and Thanksgiving is perfect if you’re farther south than us here in zone 5 and the Finger Lakes of New York, err on the side of Thanksgiving or even later. If you’re colder than us feel free to go think of Halloween or a little bit earlier. So yeah, your goal is also to be planting your garlic on a warm, dry day. Make it as comfortable on yourself as possible knowing that it’s not summer anymore. And the chances are you’re not going to be totally comfy cozy, you might have sweaters on, we often have gloves and hats as we’re planting our garlic. But that means that the garlic is that much more comfortable and we’ll be growing that much more effectively just establishing those roots but not growing a shoot before the winter really comes. So that is right timing.
Number three, soil prep. And so let’s just talk about site real quick like where is your garlic wanting to grow full sun, great drainage; garlic hates having wet feet. So full sun and great drainage, two keys right off the bat. But apart from that any soil type will do the more rich your soil is, the bigger your soil your garlic is going to get. But honestly, they’re not daunted by clay. They’re not super daunted by rocks either. So any soil type you’ve got the your garlic is going to be doing great things for you. So it’s more about When you choose to prepare and how your ground and so this is tricky because a first and foremost, reducing how much we work the soil how much we till and turn over the soil is so important every time you turn over the soil, you’re burning up organic matter and you’re destroying our soil structure and aggregates. So the less you work your soil so much the better. And so if you’ve if you Here we are at the end of September. If you haven’t prepped your bed for garlic yet, you want to wait until your garlic your soil is nice and dry. So it’s literally crumbling. If it’s two more wet and it’s cloudy, and then you try to work it you’re going to be destroying your soil that much faster and your garlic is going to be that much smaller as a result. So wait, it’s tricky, but wait until your garlic till your soil is nice and dry. So that it crumbles in your hands and at that point Incorporate compost and other amendments you might put in. Next we’ll talk about fertility. So I’ll leave that for a couple more minutes. But yeah, for just soil prep, you want to wait for that nice dry, crumbly soil then either incorporate your soil gently into it, whether you have a fork or a tillage tool, or if you’re doing no till, just put it straight on top. And if you’re having a raised bed, just put that the compost and amendments right on top as well. Another general rule, if you can stick your hand all the way into the soil and there’s no resistance, you really you have got loose, lovely soil. And you can just lay the soil, lay the compost on top with the amendments, work them in a may a little bit maybe but basically they’re going to be incorporating really easily if you have more of dense soil and you might like put your knuckle got your number one your hand into the soil by like one knuckle or 2 you want to loosen up your soil to be able to really incorporate those nutrients and have the soil be lighter, that’ll be better for your garlic to be establishing its root system and so it’s a fine balance of having soil that is great to grow in and having a really robust no till system. Honestly most of the no till gardens that I see kind of suck but they mostly come down to they just need a lot more organic matter and so and life to really keep those biological cycles spinning and it takes a few years to really get them going. So don’t be daunted. We’re going to more and more to no till ourselves. And yet just but anytime that you can even reduce tillage so much the better if you have if you can only stick a few knuckles of your fingers into your soil, put the compost on top and even taking a digging fork and loosening the soil. A little incorporating it that way that will go so far. 
So another thing to keep in mind, we’re experimenting with tarping. And tarping is something that you’ve not heard you maybe have you heard a little bit about, certainly you’ll be hearing a lot more of it. It’s becoming rather trendy and I hope that it’s not just a trend or fad, but that it is truly something that will be around for generations to come because it’s a pretty amazing tool of preparing your bed in early mid September. And so whether it involves tillage or reduced tillage or no till you’re basically preparing your bed when the soil is dry, and not just crossing your fingers and hoping that sometime in October, you’re still dry out. So you’re prepping your beds in early mid September and you’re putting a tarp over it, which I know sounds crazy. Sometimes people also put straw or other kinds of mulch on but that also is problematic, but We’ll talk about mulch in a few minutes, don’t worry. But when you put the tarp over it, basically, you’re preventing weeds from growing, you’re preventing nutrients from leaching you’re preventing the beds from being from displacing. And then by the time you’re ready to plant your garlic you can just take off the tarp and you’re so ready to go. And it really reduces a lot of the variables of fall soil preparation, so tarping much more to be said. But know that that is an option as well and a great one. 
So yet with containers I wanted to mention too because Carl asked a great question. Thank you Carl. Can I grow garlic in containers you can and I highly recommend again bigger is better. This is a 15 gallon recycled water bottle these beautiful fabric containers you’ll find them on our website. We grow full size dahlias and tomatoes we grow ginger and these. Anything that you grow that you want to have a large amount of Soil volume nutrients, these 15 gallon bags are great and that is what we grow our garlic in. So I’ll share more about some details of garlic and containers later. But basically no don’t mess around. Even though it looks big, and it is big for a standard container. It’s still a thimble compared to these guys they are these are some of the heaviest speeding crops that you’ll be growing. So don’t skimp on the fertility on the compost on the amendments, fill it right up to the top. And but yes, don’t be daunted you can totally grow garlic and containers and I hope that you do.
So yeah, let’s that is a perfect segue to now talking about fertility. And this is really kind of the crux of what to nail friends because it doesn’t matter if you get the biggest, most glorious organic garlic. If your pH is a little off and you’re not giving them ample nutrients, they’re just not going to be they’re going to be Smaller than you would ever have hoped. So, yes, here’s so here’s a little bit to keep in mind about fertility. Basically three things, get a soil test, rock on the compost and don’t mess around, be abundant with your amendments as well. So soil test 6.2 is a great pH for just generally growing vegetables, garlic included. And if you don’t know your soil pH, you can get a little soil pH like test but I highly recommend spending $20 and sending a cup of soil to Cooperative Extension, and they will give you not only the pH but 1000 other metrics to understand your soil health, and I personally love it so much. I think snorkeling is also really fun. And if you’re not soil testing your garden it’s like snorkeling on the Great Barrier Reef except you’ve got your snorkel on but you’re just on a pontoon boat above the water and you think you’re part of the party, but you need to get in The water to be part of the party on the Great Barrier Reef and actually be snorkeling and seeing what is around you. Same is true for soil tests. If you’re not testing your soil, you’re on the pontoon boat above the Great Barrier Reef, and you really don’t see what’s going on underneath the soil. So, next week, I’m sharing a blog post of how to knock a soil test. It’s really easy, and I can’t wait to share it with you. So yes, if you haven’t already, just do it. And you’ll be so glad you did. And it’s harder to if you do it now in the fall, which I recommend. You won’t be able to necessarily dial in your soil for your garlic this year, but everything for next year including next year’s garlic, you can totally accommodate. So yes, that is my shameless plug. You gadget, do your soil test friends, it’s so satisfying and illuminating. 
So yes, now compost and amendments are the two two keys that you have. So compost. You want six inches on your bed that you’re growing garlic in. And I know that sounds like a lot and it is a lot and you’re not feeding your garlic friends you’re feeding the soil which then in turn feeds your garlic. As the general rule in organics, we don’t feed the crop we feed the soil because we know that the life of the soil the diversity, the resilience of the soil, the fertility of the soil, will is ultimately what allows any kind of abundance to be harvested. So yes, feed the crop, not feed the soil, not the crop is a tenant of organic agriculture. So yes, six inches of compost is amazing. And if you have one inch of compost that also is better than no inches of compost, and not all compost is created equal. And you can be creating more of a challenge for yourself if you’re getting garlic that has for example, weed seeds in it. So anytime you can Get this weeds free weed seed free compost so much the better and often our home compost unless you’re really turning it and taking great care of it, it will likely have weed seeds in it too. So definitely keep an eye open for that. I if you haven’t already seen I have this awesome mini course on composting, and it’s really fun. There’s some really great stories also fantastic techniques so that you can really up your game and have plenty of your own homegrown amazing compost. So yeah, we grow we have we put six inches of compost on our beds before we plant our garlic and we also incorporate a lot of other amendments friends. And we do this because garlic is the heaviest feeding crop in your garden. Most likely if you’re growing ginger, she is way up there. And broccoli wants a lot too. But garlic, shallots, they are so hungry. And there’s such a direct relationship between Yes, the signs That you plant and the size that you’ll harvest but also the quantity and quality of fertility of nutrients that are in your soil and average soil. For every single garlic for every single shallot you plant, you might get five for mediocre soil. In our gardens, we often get 1518 more or more per one that we plant because our fertility is so exceptional. So I can’t recommend highly enough, don’t mess around in the fertility fertility department and for our shallots. So my partner Matthew is amazing. And he loves fertility and lots of wonderful things but he loves thinking about like fertilizers and amendments and soils and how he can really be optimizing our soil health so that our crops can be optimally robust for you. And so we actually put in his special net blend in this little bag for you and one bag is perfect for one pound of either garlic or shallots. And you have it’s this wonderful combination of alfalfa meal of feather meal, of humates. There is compost crumbles. And this is you incorporate at the beginning of your soil prep. So that’s just part of the soil. And that is it’s perfectly formulated so it’s really inspiring that root growth. But it’s not encouraging that shoot growth initially in the fall because remember, you want to establish roots but you don’t want that shoot to be growing more than three inches tall by the time the winter is here in earnest.
And so another thing it has lots of long term fertility to slow release so that by the time because your garlic is super hungry, and especially in the spring, when your garlic is just emerging, nutrients in the soil and cold soils cycle much less quickly and are more difficult for plants to uptake then when Then in warm soil, so garlic, just picture your garlic and growing first thing in spring it like is so an insanely tenacious. But in order to do that they need to access lots of nutrients and if you can offer it to them, so much the better. So yes, you want this, this fertilizer makes it so easy. There’s also It comes with this lovely little additional bag. When you open it up, you’ll find this bag on the top with the rest of the granular fertilizer underneath. And this is bloodmeal that you’ll apply one teaspoon around each plant kind of just once mid May, early June in that ballpark, just just before a few weeks before they really start to throw their garlic scapes for the hard necks. And that way that’s kind of the the apex when they’re the hungriest they’ve gone through all the easily accessible nutrients in the soil, and you could just give them that blood meal and they’re off to the races. 
So yes, I can’t recommend highly enough. When you are preparing your soil for next season putting that compost abundantly in your soil or in your container and augmenting it with our amendments will go so far and harvesting the largest garlic that you’ve ever harvested in your life. So that is right fertility friends. Next we have right orientation. So check it out this, this is one of our French Gray shallots. And you can see there’s the roots down here and it tapers up here and the root plate is down. Here the open for a typical growth point is also associated with the root plate. So you want to be growing it in this configuration this down in my hand and this is in the soil. You want to be selling it in this orientation. If you saw it like this, it’ll still grow that the roots will grow down and the shoot will bend up, but it won’t be nearly as efficient, it will most likely break at some point in the season, and certainly when you’re harvesting it and it won’t cure as well also. So it’s one of the super easiest things that you can do to just plant them in the right configuration. And when it comes to this garlic, this big, beautiful garlic, you want to be taking the wrappers off, and you want to do this just before you’re going to plant. So we sit down with all of our garlic, all of our hundreds of beautiful garlic bulbs, and we’re breaking them into our 10s of thousands of beautiful cloves and we’re breaking them apart for a few hours before we plant them. And we’re laughing and are singing songs. And you’ll want to break this and instead of planting this bulb, you will that would be a fiasco. You break this all down into all of her cloves. And you’ll plant these as individuals. And this goes to for your shallots. So you can see this looks like one big challenge. But in fact, if you take fact the rapper Oh, there’s two marvelous. I’ll plant these and sometimes it looks like there’s this we could technically break down into two. But as I look at the root plate, I can tell that it’s probably just better off as one. And I want to be sure that this bulb wrapper, this, this is still on where I don’t want to have any of that beautiful purple flesh open exposed to the cold cold soil. So, yeah, break each of your shallots, break each of your garlic down into individual cloves, and be sure to plant them again, clove with that root plate down and that tapered side going up so the roots can go down and the chute will come up. So now that you’ve got the orientation right, right spacing is our next and almost final detail right spacing six inches apart from each other. So and not only in lines but also in rows six inches. In the row and between rows, we plant them on a grid. We have three foot wide beds and we have them every six inches throughout. If we’re planting something like lettuce, we’ll plant that same old plant with a foot on center, but we’ll have each of the rows staggered, which actually maximizes the surface area. But in the case of garlic, especially if you’re not planning on mulching, having them in straight lines and rows, so that they’re not staggered, makes the weeding that much more streamlined, that much more simple, that much more effective. So yes, that six inches is ideal. True Confessions we do eight inches, because we really love for them to not have any competition with each other. Both above ground or below ground. We are wanting every single garlic bulb to be freaking amazing. And so that six agent inches will probably do it but the eight inches definitely does. So if you are really going for the biggest garlic Oh Of all time, feel free to go for that eight inches. But know that six inches was likely going to do just fine. So yes, go out to the fields with your rulers, measuring sticks. We have all kinds of fun dribblers and other tools, but definitely don’t eyeball it, at least for the first 30 times, bring your roasted ruler or whatever you have out into the fields and measure those six inches in, in between, between garlic in the row and between the rows. So, yes, now let’s talk about depth because it doesn’t matter if you plant them on the most beautiful space thing if it’s not deep enough, which is one of the most common problems that people have. So it’s really important to plant garlic deep and I’d love to tell you why. Garlic when you plant this girl like the shallot it will you’re planting it after Frost and before the snow is the ground is frozen. And so the ground is freezing the ground is fine, the ground is freezing, the ground is fine, fine, and that is frost that frost heave, is what brings rocks perennially, up into your gardens. And they’re also bringing horseshoes and arrowheads up from the depths. And they will bring your garlic and your shallots up from the depths as well. So it is so essential that as you are planting them, you plant them deep enough. So of course mulch which we’ll talk about last. Mulch mitigates that free, soft cycle. So if you’re in mulching, you only need to plant three inches deep. Get out your ruler, three inches deep. But if you’re not mulching you really want to go five inches down. Don’t mess around. It’s one of again, the saddest. The saddest thing that that I’ve had to learn the hard way. Is that garlic yes is so So impervious to the cold, it can handle such incredibly cold temperatures, but it’s not impervious to drying desiccating winter winds. And so anytime that you can prevent that garlic from actually being exposed to the winter winds, it will when it will not winter kill, it will survive that much more readily. So, yes, three inches down if you have plenty five, six inches of mulch, or five inches of down if you don’t have any mulch at all. So there is your depth fence and some people ask well, is it possible to plant it too deep, and you technically could plant it way too deep. But in this case, it would still emerge, it would just emerge a week, two weeks later, which would only mean you don’t get that much. You get a little less growth of leaf a little less, perhaps girth in your total garlic or shallot that you’re Harvesting, but again, better to plant deep than not deep enough. So yes, there you are three inches deep with mulch five inches deep without mulch. And so which brings us to mulch to mulch or not the mulch, this is the question and you’ve totally got options. There are pros and cons no matter what you do, no matter what, what you do have anything in your life, especially in your garden, and even with mulching, I know. So I’ll go through some of the pros and some of the cons for you. So the pros of mulching is you’re weeding less and there’s more moisture retention and there’s less receiving. That’s pretty awesome. But the cons of mulching is it makes weeding difficult. And you generally need to weed or mulch several times if you are mulching Otherwise, the mulch decomposes. it compresses and weeds are able to come up through and if they do, then you’re committed to hand reading them and that is no fun. So yes, a con to mulch is the fact that we can be more difficult. If you’re not on top of your mulching, it means that your soil is cooler in the spring so they don’t emerge as quickly. And also, if it’s a really wet season, that moisture retention can be just that event disadvantageous. I’m not even sure that’s a word, but it’s a disadvantage. If it’s a wet season and you have mulch which is retaining moisture, so no mulch, what are the pros, you can read that much more precisely, and also feed them more precisely and actually top dress them more comprehensively, whether you’re growing garlic or shallots or anything else. So that is a very important thing to keep in mind. It also means that the soil will warm earlier in the spring if there is no mulch, which is certainly can be an advantage can be a disadvantage, it’s generally an advantage. So but the con to having no mulch is that you have to read more, and that is just a thing.
So there’s also some a intermediary in the mulch epartment of using row cover as much, but let me not get ahead of myself. Morgan asked, Can I use leaves as mulch? And yes, you can Morgan. Most leaves most deciduous leaves and I’m excited to give you the whole laundry list of other things that you can use to mulch. So people generally go for straw, and I highly recommend straw. Old hay, especially if you’re not allergic to dust or mold is excellent.grass clippings compost, other great options and then deciduous leaves as long as you put them through a chipper shredder first and as long as they’re not black walnut leaves and under no circumstances don’t use anything coniferous any kind of evergreen pine spruce boughs needles of any kind. So yeah, you can so let me talk about straw first straw versus hay. So imagine this is straw And it is basically imagine, this was an oat plant that had all of these oats on the top, the green, the seeds were harvested by the farmer, and the rest of the stem was bunched up into a bale and he gave it to us and we mulch with it. Here’s the thing that’s awesome about it. This is a lot of carbon, as opposed to hay, which I’ll talk about in a minute, which is essentially green. This has a lot of nitrogen in it in it as well, so it decomposes much more quickly. Where this is mostly carbon so decomposes much less quickly. So when you’re using straw as a mulch, you really don’t have you can you need to mulch at least twice once that first time in the fall when you after you plant but also generally in the spring when the garlic emerges and you can put another five inches six inches of mulch down. The more the merrier. And early and often is a great strategy so that you’re just adding easy mulch layers, but not having to weed. A disadvantage with straw is often it’s hard to find organic. And another aspect is a lot of farmers don’t do a very clean job of removing all of the seeds. So even though you think you’re getting something seed free, you’re in fact, getting straw with a lot of maybe rye or barley or triticale or oats, barley seed in it, which then germinate in the straw and become the weeds themselves. So especially that can be problematic in the case of rye, but sometimes of wheat but I highly recommend if you can find out straw fabulous because the oats will winter kill. But anytime you can ask your source of straw, are you sure this is seed free and don’t always believe them, but give them the benefit of the doubt at least the first time. But know that that is been a challenge across the years and on all different farms that I’ve been on. So old hay is also a great option. There is often more weed seed and hay because imagine hay is a hay field being cut, and consolidated, so it’s green, rather than gold. And but there can also be a lot of seeds that have already gone to seed in it. If you can get first cutting of hay, that is the dream. So yeah, and the hay, it has a lot more nitrogen. So there’s a lot more nutrition in it, which is great. It’ll feed your crop of garlic of shallots much more, but it will also decompose and compress much faster. So if you’re using hay, you have to have a lot more material. You mulch multiple times so that you don’t risk you aren’t risking weeding more. So yeah, the eternal quandary of hay versus straw. A grass clippings are also awesome, but just like hay, they’re going they’re very green nitrogen, carbon ratio; they’re going to break down quickly. So you need a lot of them to be effective.
Leaves on the other hand, wait let me talk about their last compost. On the other hand, compost is also awesome. Six inches is great. That can be often it’s the most expensive thing you can use but it’s fantastic full of nutrients going to suppress weeds and retain moisture without any of them well it’s actually acting like soil because it is soil. So use it having compost is pretty dreamy. But second best is deciduous leaves, and deciduous leaves that have been sent through a chipper shredder. So they have that much more surface area. And that’s because often when you have full size leaves, especially if they’re great big sugar maples or great big white oaks or red oaks, they can become this solid mat of in the winter as they’re compressing. And so in the spring, when that garlic shoot is trying to emerge out of it, they can really see I’ve seen them really struggle to emerge out of wide leafed deciduous leaves as like six inches of mulch. So another option is to put just if you don’t have a chipper shredder, put just a couple inches of those leaves down as a mulch. And then in the spring when the garlic shoots and shallot shoots emerge, then put six inches of your of your leaves right on top. And that way you can be totally sure that you are knocking it out of the park and having your cake and eating it too: feeding your crop, but also not weeding your crop as you’re trying to mulch it. 
So there you have it, friends, that is a ton of information. And I’m so grateful to share it all with you. And yet you can watch this as many times as you like, take tons of notes. And again, I’ve made you that lovely little ebook. Be sure to download it if you haven’t already. And if you didn’t see the link, be sure to just ask me I’m happy to send it to you and know that that is that ebook is the cliff notes version and our Full Size version. I’ve just made an online course growing great garlic for you. And I’ve made a number of other online courses. I’m proud of them all hundreds of people have taken them and been written me the most beautiful things of how success more successful they’ve been as a result of them.
But I have to tell you this new garlic, this garlic webinar, and pardon me, I’m really proud of this too. But this online course I’m super proud of, because it’s really comprehensive. And it is such a deep dive. And it has hours and hours of video tutorials but broken down into bite sized pieces that are very specific. So it’s really easy to just search by subject search by season, and it really sets you up for success of growing throughout the seasons. In this webinar, I’ve just told you how to knock it out of the park this fall and there’s so much more to share when it’s springtime. So this online course covers everything. In the fall, everything in the spring, summer curing all kinds of things, and you have access to it for the full year. So it’s an amazing resource friends. It is. It’s $68. And I’m so excited to share with you these principles because they go so much farther than just growing garlic and shallots. They’ll expand into growing everything in your garden better.
And I think cultivating joy outside your garden as well. So thank you so much for joining me in this webinar. And to set you up even more for success. I have this little gift for you friends, it’s a little promo code and it will give you $10 off anything on our website. And so it’s $10 it’s they’ll give you any off anything that I’m especially imagining anything that you might need to set yourself up for success this fall, whether it’s getting more shallots, anything are this beautiful fertilizer, any of the row cover, you might want To use as like an additional mulch cover.
If you want to get some spinach to throw in last minute or some seeds from microgreens this fall. I’m so excited for you to have what you need and to not be shy. So that $10 promo code is I heart webinars. So that’s I heart webinars on one long lowercase word.I heart webinars and that will give you $10 off any order $20 or more on our website, FruitionSeeds.com, and it expires on October 6 friends, so don’t dally. And if you have any questions anytime you know where to find us, my email is Petra@fruitionseeds.com, and you can always give our landline a call here at the farm two or 585-374-8903 that’s 585-734-8903 and you’ll find tons more info on our blog on our website with all kinds of YouTube, our YouTube channel, all of those relevant videos are embedded in our website as well. And if you don’t already, be sure to jump on Instagram, social media, Facebook, follow us. Join along. We have lots of fun there and share lots of great tips with you too. And if you haven’t been to the farm yet, this is your cordial invitation. We’re actually having our ginger harvest in the dahlias party this Saturday. It’s the 28th of September. But we have lots of various events throughout the seasons. And I’m so excited to share this farm with you if you haven’t already. If you have already come may not be your last and if you haven’t come no you’re always welcome. And I’m so delighted always to share this with you friends because growing garlic, growing shallots, growing food and sharing that food sharing that abundance with people that I love is why I jump out of bed in the morning. It gives me so much hope for the world and Not in just like this pie in the sky. Oh, wouldn’t it be nice kind of hopeful way? By it’s real hope because it’s real action. It’s real humans, real animals, plants, real ecosystems all of a sudden engaging with each other again, I think so much of the disenchantment that I’ve experienced in my life and disappointment that I experienced in our culture of disconnection comes from not knowing how to fully engage and ask questions and dig in and get messy and make mistakes and learn ask questions of people you respect. And I am so grateful to have so many mentors in my life. And still today who I can call up and say, What do I do now? What’s this insect? Oh my goodness. What do I don’t know actually, can you give me another recipe for garlic? I’m a little bored with all of mine. I’ve never said that actually, but I could imagine one day I might. But being able to talk with people that I love and connect and can communicate be part of a community of people who grow and ask questions or cultivating so much more than garlic friends are cultivating incredible curiosity and communities of resilience. And thank you for giving me hope in the world. I can’t wait to share it all with you again and again. And hopefully here on the farm one day too.