Garlic In The Field

Minnesota

CARL ROSEN

I grew up in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, a small college town near Philadelphia. Although I did not have a farm background, I always had an interest in gardening and growing plants. After high school, I worked in a small dairy and potato farm in Cork Ireland, where I learned how to drive a tractor, milk cows, and harvest potatoes. Following my Ireland experience, I attended Penn State University and majored in horticulture with an emphasis in vegetable production.

I earned a BS from Penn State in 1976 and stayed on for a Master of Science degree in horticulture for another two years. In 1978, I moved to California to attend the University of California at Davis to work on a Ph. D. degree in Soil Science. I was actually housed in the Pomology Department at Davis and worked on a potassium nutrition problem encountered in prune orchards. In 1983, I earned a Ph.D. degree in Soil Science and was fortunate to be hired by the University of Minnesota in St. Paul as an Extension Soil Scientist where I have worked for the past 22 years. I hold a joint appointment in the Departments Soil, Water and Climate, and Horticultural Science.

My garlic growing experience started in about 1995 when I received a call from a local farmer about soil fertility requirements for growing the crop in Minnesota. At that time, I did not even know that garlic could be grown in such a cold climate as most of the garlic in the US was produced in California.

The rest of course is history - I was able to obtain a grant from the Minnesota Department of Agriculture to conduct soil fertility studies on garlic for two years and in my spare time I now conduct variety trials in my own garden as well as at one of colleague's farm in Zumbro Falls, a small town in the southeast Minnesota. We plant about 2000 garlic cloves each fall, which provides enough garlic for our families and friends.

Recipe: Pesto