No surprises: This year’s garlic crop appears to be just what Garlic Co. expected
No surprises: This year’s garlic crop appears to be just what Garlic Co. expected
The Garlic Co. in Bakersfield, CA, held steady in its planted acreage of garlic for the 2013 harvest, and as of late July it appeared the harvest was going to be right on target with company expectations, according to John Layous, a partner in the company.
“We didn’t do any kind of an expansions or contraction of acres,” he said July 24. “We just grew our normal amount, and so far, the crop looks just exactly that — what we expected to get.”
The Garlic Co. grows two garlic varieties, “a little bit of California Early garlic but mostly California Late garlic. With the harvest of the Early garlic completed, Layous said “I think the Early garlic is probably a little better than what is normal in quality and size.” However, “the Late garlic looks pretty normal to me.”
About 25 to 30 percent of the company’s Late garlic is harvested and clipped by hand for the fresh market. The rest is machine harvested for the processed market. “The hand harvest is about half done, and we just started the machine harvest a week ago,” he said.
The company’s program is very consistent with past years, Layous continued, and that is due to a steady demand from customers. “We plant what we think we can sell to the people who have been buying garlic from us over the years.”
The company has been in business since 1980, when Layous was 32 years old.
“Back in those days, there wasn’t any whole peeled garlic,” he said. “It was just the whole bulb. Everything was hand harvested. There has been a lot of growth in the business over that time” as per capita consumption “has gone up quite a bit.”
Also, back then, the California garlic was not put in cold storage to the extent that is done now, and there was more Argentine garlic and more Mexican garlic coming into the United States after the new year, during California’s off-season, than there is today, he said. The big change since then has been the increase in the amount of Asian garlic coming into the U.S. market.
Layous described The Garlic Co. as “steady” but also as “a square deal sort of company. We have,” he said, “decent quality at a decent price, and I think very good customer service. And we are reliable.”
