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December 7, 2001

Garlic guru grows online business

By Lana Robinson
Field Editor

More and more, successful farmers are those who find a niche and direct market their products. Bob Anderson of Bangs, owner of Gourmet Garlic Gardens, a web-based business, got a whiff of prosperity several years ago when he discovered just how many people cook with this pungent spice. Today, garlic lovers visit Anderson's website to purchase exotic garlics for culinary use and planting and to glean gardening tips designed to avoid a bad aftertaste. Organic growers log on to provide Anderson with superior garlic to satisfy customers' discriminating palates and hobby gardeners' demands.

Anderson's evolution from computer geek to garlic guru began in 1993, when he and his wife, Merridee McClatchy, escaped the bustle of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex to the quietness of her family's ranch near Trickham, southwest of Brownwood. The couple's goal was to help Merridee's father, C.T. (Pete) McClatchy, who lives near Bangs, keep his cattle business going and enjoy a slower pace of life. In addition to his ranch duties, Anderson began growing rare garlics because he found them fascinating and discovered a source who grew and sold them.

"Some varieties need a colder winter than we have and cannot grow here at all while others will do well in cold winter years and barely drag through warm winter years," says Anderson, who has learned a great deal about growing and marketing garlic over the past eight years. "We wound up growing over 60 different kinds to see which ones grew best for us in our environment. We culled out those that did not excel for us as we wanted to grow large beautiful garlics that sell well. We wound up with 15 to 18 varieties and continue to try a few new ones each year."

He began selling garlics, herbs and vegetables at the Brownwood Farmers Market and subsequently ventured to farmers markets in Abilene, Austin, Georgetown and Dallas in search of a larger consumer-base.

"All of the traveling, time away from the farm and expense caused us to look at other ways to market our little treasures, so we decided to set up our own farmers market stand on the information highway instead of the local road and broaden our marketplace to include the whole USA," Anderson explains.

Anderson says the first couple of years on the web were slow, but news of the website spread and sales increased.

"We did nothing to promote our website. We just tried to make it as informative as possible and have a few nice photos and a little humor here and there. People found it and told their friends. In the last two years, we have found ourselves recommended by Food & Wine and Forbes magazines and the New York Times, and about a hundred other newspapers," he reports. "One thing is for sure, we have created a website that can sell more garlic than we can grow and we wish to share this resource with buyers and growers alike. It will also allow us to offer many more varieties than we can grow in our geographic location."

When a tornado and hail storm a year ago last April, followed by a drought, destroyed Anderson's crop, he appealed to other growers to sell him garlic wholesale so he could fill his orders. The arrangement worked so well, he's doing the same in 2001.

"By bringing buyer and grower together, we serve a valuable function to both. We realize neither we nor any other small grower can satisfy the market needs for these garlics, but by combining resources, we can help more buyers find their cherished garlics and more growers find a good market for their best garlic," Anderson explains. "You cannot generate this kind of excitement with second-rate garlic, only the best will do."

Anderson has enjoyed an early market advantage.

"Our garlic matures a month or two earlier than the northern growers so we can offer high-quality gourmet varieties much sooner than most other growers. We often begin harvesting in early May and can have freshly harvested garlic available at that time," he notes.

Anderson plans to devote more acreage for growing garlic in rotation. His operation is not yet Certified Organic, but he has begun the application process .

"The only soil additives we use are minerals purchased from organic suppliers and chicken and cow manure from our own farm, plus compost that we make ourselves. We have our soils tested regularly so we know which trace minerals to add and in what quantities to maintain a healthy, well balanced soil. We use only such measures against pests as are approved by the Texas Department of Agriculture for certified organic growers. The garlic doesn't seem to need any of these measures but the vegetables do. None of the individual gardens where we have grown our garlic were of sufficient size to warrant certification, but now that we are moving into a 20 acre field, it will be advantageous to go through the formality of certifying what we have already been doing," Anderson explains.

According to Anderson, there are some 600 cultivated sub-varieties of garlic in the world, although most have developed from a handful of basic types over the centuries.

Botanists classify all true garlics under the species Allium Sativum. There are two subspecies; Ophio-scorodon, or hard-necked garlics (ophios for short) and Sativum, or soft-necked garlics. Differing cultural practices have given birth to five distinct varieties of garlic—three very different, hard-neck varieties called Purple Stripe, Porcelain and Rocambole and two soft-neck varieties, Artichoke and Silverskin—along with 17 sub-varieties that fall under the heading of these five varieties.

"Soft-necks generally have about twice as many cloves per bulb as the hard-necks. The hard-neck garlics tend to be more colorful and have fewer, but larger, cloves per bulb than the soft-necks, and a deeper flavor, but don't store as long," he notes.

In addition to the standard purple stripes, he notes two groups of sub-varieties, the glazed group and the marbled group.

"Both seem to have thicker bulb wrappers and fewer cloves per bulb than the standard group," he adds.

Anderson suggests the best time to plant garlic is in the fall, as close to the autumnal equinox as possible.

Multi-cloved bulbs left in the ground result in a large number of very small garlics the following spring. Therefore, bulbs must be pulled from the ground and stored in a cool, dry place until the fall. In the fall, separate the bulbs into cloves, being careful not to bruise or damage the cloves, and plant the cloves, top side up, four to six inches apart so they will have room to grow and not fight over the limited resources of a small area.

Although garlic will grow in flat ground without raised beds, the raised beds provide better drainage, making garlic less susceptible to disease.

"Here in Central Texas, we plant about two to four inches deep, with larger varieties going a little deeper in the ground than the smaller varieties. We put them in by hand so we can be sure each clove is properly bedded down. It's a lot of work on our hands and knees, but it's the best way to get the best results," says Anderson. "Our beds are six inches tall, we drip irrigate with T-Tapes and cover all with a three-inch mulch to protect from weeds and to hold in the soil moisture, more to act as a barrier to direct sunlight on the soil than for temperature protection. Garlic survives cold quite well as it was designed by nature to grow in the fall, rest in the winter and bulb out in the late spring or early to mid-summer."

Anderson has begun to specialize in varieties that do better in the South. He tries to maintain, during the season, from 12 to 24 garlic varieties. He sells it for $12 to $16 per pound, depending on size or variety, with a minimum order of one pound, and begins shipping in early- to mid-September.

Chet's Italian Red, available from Filagree Farms, Okanogan, Wash., is one of the first garlics Anderson began growing and it still ranks very high with his family.

"It is a wonderful garlic and I highly recommend it for those who love good-tasting mild garlic. It is well worth growing and is a very early maturing garlic which you can be enjoying while most of the others are still in the ground," says Anderson.

An early season variety with limited availability from Gourmet Garlic, Inc. is Red Toch, one of many delightful garlics originally from the Republic of Georgia in the former Soviet Union.

"Red Toch averages fairly large bulbs that are a little larger than Chet's but not as large as Simoneti or Inchelium Red. It generally grows fairly clean under good conditions and has a lot of smallish inner cloves. It likes to finish off its growing season somewhat on the dry side, otherwise it can develop a little fungus in storage and lose a few bulb wrappers," Anderson warns. "It usually grows rather well for us here in Central Texas and is one of our family's favorites, especially for raw eating. It is a very early maturing garlic and is one of the first cultivars we harvest each year."

Simoneti, another wonderfully mild garlic originating in the Republic of Georgia, is Anderson's personal favorite for raw eating.

"It is another grower's delight as it has many large plantable cloves—12 to 18 or more—and you can build up your garden with it in only a season or two. Simoneti has a very thick neck and is very large-leafed and has a rather roundish shape. As with other large artichoke garlics it harvests in mid-season and takes a little longer than average to cure due to its large size," he says.

Varieties that have grown well for Anderson in years with colder winters and cooler springs, but not in hot or dry years, include Purple Stripes, such as Skuri#2, Chesnok Red, and Persian Star, and Porcelains, such as Floha, Zemo, Georgia Crystal, and Georgia Fire.

For more information, call 915/348-3049; or visit Anderson's website: www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com.