By Scott Mitchell Johnson
Staff Writer
PRESQUE ISLE – While Maine is known for potatoes, blueberries and lobsters, Dr. Steven B. Johnson, crops specialist and professor with the University of Maine Cooperative Extension, hopes to one day add garlic to that list.
To get residents excited about garlic – while at the same time glean useful information that could help with production – Johnson and Dave Fuller, extension agricultural professional in Farmington, have created the Maine Garlic Project.
“This is a participatory research program where community members are contributing to the overall knowledge of garlic and garlic production in Maine,” said Johnson. “Specifically, goals of the Maine Garlic Project include development of optimal planting and harvest times for different areas of the state. A benefit would also be cataloging fertility used to produce the crop, and raising the awareness of home-produced food.
“The project may add a new crop to many home gardens,” he said, “and may also help market gardeners to increase the size, salability, and revenue realized from larger garlic bulbs.”
For a one-time entry fee of $5, participants will receive a garlic bulb containing 5-7 cloves in the mail along with planting instructions and a data collection form. Growers will also get a $5 discount on a soil sample test from the University of Maine Soil Testing Lab.
“Each clove from this bulb should produce a complete bulb late summer,” said Johnson. “The cloves from these bulbs can be replanted next summer – and summers after that – providing an increasing and continual garlic supply for the future.
Participants will record data that – once posted to the Internet – will be able to be viewed by all growers. Among the data that will be recorded includes soil pH, fertility added (if any), variety, planting date, mulching date, emergence date, maturity date, harvest date, days cured, whether the scapes (flower stalks with small aerial bulbels) were removed, bulb diameter, appearance and flavor, and the date the garlic sprouted in storage.
“By having a participatory project, we’ll be able to determine some general ranges,” said Johnson. “We’d like to get a couple years out of the study. Within two years we should be able to collect enough useful information to help with production.
“We’d like to have anybody that wants to do it to take a swing at growing garlic because it’s really not that hard,” he said. “I planted garlic from mid-September to mid-October last year and it started to come out of the ground in April. It’s up to 2-3 feet high now. I’ll harvest in less than a month.”
To date more than 50 people have signed up to participate in the Maine Garlic Project.
“We’ve got people from some of the islands off Maine, Presque Isle, Fort Fairfield, Blue Hill and I just returned a call from someone in Madawaska,” said Johnson. “We should get a pretty nice distribution and we’ll take as many who want to do it.”
The Extension’s Eat Well nutrition education program has become involved in the project, as well.
“They’ll be incorporating garlic into their newsletters,” said Johnson. “They also hope to solicit peoples’ favorite garlic recipes which might be added to the website. Part of the idea is to get people to eat local.”
The project is being done in conjunction with the extension’s Agricultural Experiment Station. Johnson said while the results will be shared, the garlic is for the grower to keep.
“It’s a little different approach that hasn’t been done,” he said, “and while it won’t yield defendable, scientific research, it will get us started on the right path.”
For more information, log onto http://extension.umaine.edu/gardening/maine-garlic-project/.
