Ah...Garlic!

DON'T FORGET - It's the Whidbey Island Farm Tour next weekend, Sept. 11 & 12th.  Willowood Farm will be open to the public for the farm tour (we are not normally!).  So come check out the farm!  We will be focusing on garlic, garlic, garlic so come check out all our cool varieties, taste some garlic, make some braids, wander around our historic farm and play with the turkeys! 
And now back to our regularly scheduled topic....

GARLIC! GARLIC! GARLIC! 

The pay-off!  Big, beautiful bulbs!

That's right, garlic gets me so excited that I have to say it 3 times!  In bold!  And capitalized! With exclamation points!
Who DOESN'T love garlic?  (Okay, I know some people don't and that is just, I'm sorry...plain weird!).
Well, at Willowood Farm, we love garlic!  Enough to grow a whole heck of a lot of it.  Like about 20 varieties!
You see, there is garlic and then their is GARLIC!  We grow the good stuff.  Of which there are 100s of varieties.  Romantic names like Porcelains and Rocamboles and Glazed Purple Stripes.  All with big cloves, big bulbs and outrageous taste.
Garlic is a crop you wait for for a long long time.  You plant it in October and then wait, wait, wait....Finally come July you start harvesting.  Then you frantically harvest, clean and hang to cure.  Then you wait.  Then you start cutting down bulbs and trimming roots.  Then finally you have THE WHOLE CROP in.  That's where we are right now.  And so today, we will be bringing out the BIG GUN displays.  Lots and lots of garlic.  Food grade and seed grade (For planting) garlic.

Hoeing young garlic plants in April

As far as seed grade garlic, well, that's the big stuff!  We sort our garlic by size, because, well in garlic, "size really does matter!"  At least if you are planting it.  Big garlic planted combined with decent growing practices should result in big garlic harvested.  Small garlic planted combined with even the best growing practices will result in only slightly larger bulbs.  If you continue to save back your biggest and best to replant eventually you will get big garlic.  So when we sell you big garlic it represents multiple years of our own "saving the biggest and best" so you don't have to! Not to mention, our garlic (we've been growing garlic for going on 12 years now), is well adapted to PacNW conditions, so it makes it a good choice for local home gardeners!
So if you want to come buy some garlic to eat, or buy some garlic to plant in your own backyard, come check out the markets today.  But never fear, if you miss us at the markets, we will be featuring garlic at the farm tour next weekend, not to mention we will continue bringing garlic to the markets and...you can also email me directly and I can pack an order for you to either pick-up, ship or deliver.  Just email me at willowoodfarm@gmail.com.
And other goodies coming to today's markets...
From Willowood Farm:
- Potatoes - multiple kinds
- Chard
- Beans, beans, beans
- Shelling peas!
- Beets
- Onions
- Leeks
- Red Cabbage
- Head Lettuce
- Shelling beans (Rockwells!)
- Fresh chickpea bunches
From Prairie Bottom Farms
- Summer squash
- Scallions
- Carrots
- Dill
- More good stuff....

See ya at market!
Farmer Georgie
Willowood farm of Ebey's Prairie