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CapitalPress.com
Friday, March 4, 2022
Elephant World Garlic: Bigger proves to be better
By GEOFF PARKS
For the Capital Press
Elephant Garlic World
Examples of Elephant Garlic World’s chief product in
packaged and ready-to-use form.
to the Willamette Valley.
“We always sell out
our entire crop within two
months,” said Haley, who
with his wife, Mary, farm
12 acres that make up their
Elephant World Garlic
operation near Aumsville,
Ore. They also lease a few
acres of nearby property.
He said his machine-
planted 7 acres of garlic
yield about 4,000 pounds
per acre, nearly all of it
for seed stock. The crop is
non-GMO, pesticide free
and Haley does not use
any “artifi cial chemical fer-
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A trailer full of just-pulled elephant garlic waits to be taken to the sheds at Elephant
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tilizers.” His seed cloves
are wholesaled to garden-
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companies.
“We eat up a lot of dirt
during planting and leave
4 feet of space between
the rows to accommodate
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the water-wheel planter we
use,” Haley said. Cloves
are spaced 8 inches apart
in 100-foot rows. He noted
that the “biggest thing” nec-
essary in growing good ele-
phant garlic is water.
“We need to put on an
inch of water every week
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— Ken Haley has a short
answer to the question of
why he chose growing fi st-
sized bulbs of elephant gar-
lic instead of the much-
smaller purple garlic.
He focused on elephant
garlic, as the larger bulbs
produced brought nearly
fi ve times the profi t of pur-
ple garlic.
“You do the math,” he
said. “The elephant garlic is
more mild, but yields giant
cloves.”
Born in Cape Cod,
Mass., but moving across
the country over his life-
time, Haley, 70, has always
farmed site-specifi c crops.
But it was living in Coos
Bay, Ore., in 1999 where he
got a passion for growing
garlic and began to gather
seed stock prior to moving
and height adjustment for efficiency.
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and make sure the fi elds are
weed-free,” he said. A typi-
cal planting for the elephant
garlic is 150 cloves per 100-
foot row.
Harvest is from early to
mid-June each year, and
after that he has a three-
month “window” with a
cover crop of peas, pur-
ple-top turnips, Daikon rad-
ish, crimson clover or yel-
low mustard seed planted to
restore nitrogen levels and
suppress weeds.
“We need a few dry days
to let the bulbs cure outside
after we dig them,” he said,
“then it’s into the drying
shed for a month or two”
before workers clean off the
roots and tops and get them
ready for shipping.
He said until the COVID
pandemic hit, his routine
after the June harvest was
to ship in August and plant
next year’s crop in Sep-
tember. He normally sold
out after March of the fol-
lowing year, but now, he
said, he is lucky to make
it through December with
product.
“People buy it up
quickly,”
said
Haley.
“Everybody wants it.”