Garlic Seed to Harvest Diary 2024

July 2023:  This is the beginning of the journey for the 2024 garlic crop.

For those who are wondering what garlic seed is, it’s the garlic bulbs that are retained from the previous harvest, run between rollers that crack the bulbs into individual cloves.  The (seed) cloves are planted within 24 hours to preserve their integrity.

Growing in the Seddon region, it’s bitter and blustery most winter days so depending on the weather it could take up to 10 days to machine plant.  With some fertiliser to give the seed a good start in life, and a bit of inter-row weeding to remove competition during the growing season, it’s now up to Mother Nature to behave … not too hot … not too wet … just right, to produce a bumper crop for the customers.

October 2023:  Keeping water up to the thirsty bulbs.

With such dry Marlborough conditions irrigation started six weeks earlier than normal and the garlic needs watering every week.  

It’s now the end of October a bit more fertiliser is applied to plump up the bulbs.

December 2023:  No rain in sight.

Dry, dry and drier!  We’re watering the crop every four days.

January 2024: Harvest Time!!

Harvest begins with one machine harvester and a crew of six.  We’re estimating it will take 2-3 weeks to complete.

February 2024:  Hello Garlic.

We are taking online orders now and our lovely fresh garlic is available in our onsite store at 854 Old Renwick Road, Renwick plus by mid-February you will see Marlborough grown Garlico garlic in supermarkets, distributed by the fabulous teams at MG Marketing and Fresh Direct.    

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