Growing Great Garlic: The Definitive Guide for Organic Gardeners and Small Farmers Paperback – November 1, 1991

What a great book! I appreciate how much detail the author goes into on his process, especially since he is a commercial grower. Normally those things are kept secret or glossed over and not very much help. He gives some really nice excerpts from his journal as well during the different seasons, highlighting problems he experiences or how things are coming along at various week intervals to help judge your own gardens progress.The thing I also found very helpful was information on modifying soil to be proper for garlic down to fertilizer types, and even amounts per acre. This makes it easy for me to calculate exactly what I need to amend my garden.One thing that made me hesitate purchasing this book were some of the negative reviews about the authors "know it all tone and hippy attitude." After reading it, I just realize that this man has a very advanced knowledge of permaculture and how the earth, crops, and animals work together as a system. His tone (in my opinion) also has a very "matter of act" manner about it, which maybe some attribute to being a know it all. As someone who's spent a lot of time in classrooms reading very dry textbooks, he just sounds like a teacher.Like any book, every author has their own views and ways to do things. That's what they've written about. This book is solid and has everything you need to know really on how to start growing garlic. I disagreed with a few things like bed preparation and spacing, but like anything in life you should take what someone says and see how to make it right for you. Sometimes that means changing a few things...That by no means makes the text useless. I have since come to reference this book quite heavily, and have highlighted sections on watering schedules and requirements, soil and compost amendment amounts, fertilizer preparation before planting, and a whole bunch more. This poor book is holding up well though.

Full of valuable information and the chapters cover a lot of information. The Glossary helps with new terms and the referenced articles in the bibliography point you to additional learning.

Nice work. If you don't have time to read through this guy's experience with garlic then maybe you shouldn't buy the book, just surf the web for the typical "60 second answer". But if you are serious about growing garlic, especially at scale, this seems to be one of the books you should read.

Very through coverage of the whole garlic process from selection for location to planting to harvest

This is truly a great book. The only thing I have to say is that in the book he implies that you might not need to cut the scapes off of hard neck garlic. I can say that you do I tried several experiments and what I have found is that when I irrigated a lot I also found no difference in in bulb size. However, when you do not irrigate a lot there is a drastic reduction in bulb size. I would always cut off the scapes not worth the risk.

I am an avid home garlic grower, and wanted to learn more about growing garlic well. This book is well written and is straightforward to read. The author is from North Central Washington state. As a fellow Washingtonian, the book really was helpful as our climate is not too different from the author's. He does a great job explaining how garlic develops, how to plant, harvest, and even market your garlic if you wish. As I now understand how garlic develops, I will be making some modifications to how I plant, grow, and harvest in the future.

I wished that I had this book when I FIRST started in garlic. What varieties to grow, how to grow, how to improve the soil so I'd get larger and healthier garlic. That is why we grow garlic, right! We want to make our bodies healthier so putting healthy vegetables in us makes us healthier. How deep to put the clove, what diseases to check for and how to keep pests away. Important, what types of MULCH works best and how deep it should be. It's all in here a loads more.

Knew most of it