About

About Garlic Gardening


We started the Garlic Gardening Website to help other growers in the United States and Canada find valuable answers to the many questions they had about growing garlic. Our goal was to provide practical information that anyone could use no matter how experienced they are. 

Over the years, we have been fortunate to speak and exchange knowledge with hundreds of other gardeners, market growers and farmers which has helped us improve our own production. This site a is a collection of all the knowledge we have learned from other garlic growers as well as our own experiences over many years of farming.

Check out our Garlic Blog Articles and How To Grow Garlic pages to learn more. 

For growers in Canada, we also have a Canadian Website where we sell our premium garlic seed. Unfortunately, we cannot ship to the United States due to import restrictions.

Farm History:

We are a fifth-generation family farm that has been growing crops on the same land since 1879. Our farm is located near the United States and Canadian border between Minnesota and Manitoba. The farm's unique climate and geography has cold zone 2b winters, hot summers and periodic wet/dry cycles. Growing in these extreme conditions has allowed us to learn the best garlic growing methods to produce large healthy bulbs.

Today:

The farm is currently managed by John and his wife Ainsley. They are helped by John's parents, who still actively work on the farm and Ainsley's father who helps with sales. Their siblings, nieces and many cousins all pitch in as well when needed. 

John is an agronomist with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Agriculture and has been using his knowledge and experience to research and develop growing techniques suitable for cold northern climates. He has written many articles about growing garlic and is the author of the "The Master Guide To Growing Big Garlic".  
 

Growing Methods:

The farm uses natural growing methods that have been adopted by organic growers. The farm never sprays their garlic crop with pesticides, always uses cover crops and has long crop rotations.

Every plant is individually inspected multiple times during the growing season and at harvest. Any garlic that appears weak and/or shows signs of disease or infection is always removed immediately and destroyed to ensure only the strongest, healthiest garlic seed is kept. 

John also works closely with extension staff from the department of agriculture to help monitor and ultimately prevent new pests/diseases from entering the farm's seed garlic stocks.

For more information on how they grow their own garlic, see their How To Grow Garlic pages.