THE Festival Creole sounds like a wild time at New Orleans but it’s actually a variety of garlic that’s part of grower Peter Hackett’s relentless search for the next big thing.
Garlic is one of 700-odd species in the allium or onion family and there are two types two different types – the soft neck (Allium sativum) and hard neck (Allium ophioscorodon), sometimes referred to as stiff neck.
Festival Creole is a good-sized bulb for type up to 60mm diameters, coming to chez Hackett at downtown Nyah via Tasmania, with white outer skins and 9-10 outer and three inner purple cloves of good size – and be warned, while it ranges between mild and hot flavoured – it comes with the kicker of what the industry euphemistically refers to as “delayed extreme heat”.
Peter says his parents, Betty and Owen, founded the family farm, but the garlic didn’t arrive until 1990, when an Agriculture Department extension officer suggested the Hacketts have a look at a winter crop.
He says until then, Tooley had been a producer of quality vealers, prime lambs, and wool as well as vegetables, including pumpkins, watermelons, and rockmelons.
In 1990, those first garlic cloves were planted to an area of 0.9 acres at the same time as Chinese exports were hammering global markets in which Tooley was operating.
So after the obvious success of the new crop, everything else was wound down and garlic became the game and Peter says after the pilot plot, many varieties have been trialled through the years – but “we are still using four varieties of garlic we obtained a long time ago, two hard stem, with white and purple colourings, and the other two varieties of soft stem, with white, to off-white colourings”.
The name Tooley Garlic was born in 1995, quickly recognised as a regular supplier of quality Australian grown garlic, named after the Landing Point, where paddlesteamers used to dock back in the paddle boat days. The landing or docking point was named Tooley Landing.
Tooley Garlic had an area of 4ha-plus planted to garlic each year before the drought years set in back in the early 2000s with two generations involved, but now planting 1.5ha each year after one generation retired.
The business also has many simple homemade machines to assist with the different stages of garlic production and over the decades, has hosted many Australian Garlic Industry Association Inc. seminar farm visits as well as staging information talks to assist people with garlic advice.
“While we have been going for a while, early on there was a lot of trial and error, a lot of learning and research and then picking and choosing varieties to get the best possible seed into our system.
“By 2000, I had really started expanding the acreage on the back of quality seed we were bringing in – seed that would work really well in our type of country.”
Country that is very marginal (at best) and which Peter describes as desert, with not too much rain, plenty of sun and wind – in an open area.
The kind of setting that would spell doom for just about any other commercial crop. It even reacts to the length of a day.
That said, you need to also work with varieties that suit your country and your management programs.
Peter reckons his place is as good a setting as you will find, but that doesn’t limit the garlic family, which has put down roots around the globe – from the Nyah desert paddocks to the steaming hot tropics in places such as Thailand.
Peter also has a maxim about which he is adamant – garlic is very bloody touchy.
And “temperamental” is another word he bandies about when discussing his garlic.
But as tricky as it might be to get the garlic to the consumer, the demand doesn’t seem to have peaked yet.
Peter recalls the early boom years, so welcome after the farm’s previous struggles against the Chinese agricultural juggernaut.
“Production in the industry was on the up just in time to catch that explosion of cooking shows on TV, and every one of them was using, and raving about, garlic,” he recalls.
“It got so much publicity, and at the same time the current surge to buy Australian was really getting some traction; so it all came together at the right time for garlic growers like me.”
But it couldn’t be all beer and skittles forever, Peter is facing the same challenges as everyone else in agriculture – getting workers when needed for sowing, harvest, and packing.
And things have got so tough, he has halved his growing program from the usual 10 acres to just five – and even there he is already pushing himself to the limit.
Then in April he was finally forced to temporarily close, when he could have been selling garlic hand over fist to people, chefs, restaurants, and growers all chasing his blue ribbon product.
“We machine-harvest but still need labour for the hands-on work such as cutting off the stems, checking each bulb (ugly vegies are not accepted by most customers) and then packing them for sale,” Peter says.
“There’s just no-one around; the almond industry sucks up a lot of people and it offers fulltime, not seasonal, employment – I need help planting but it can be all over in four days. Even I find myself telling people the secure fulltime job has to be a better gig than seasonal,” he says.
“My dad has passed away and mum is 89 in September, but she, Nancy, my wife, and I, well, we’re the pickers because there’s no-one else. We needed eight to 10 people to chop garlic and got two. We needed two to pack and got none. It is labour intensive, it can work for a family, and while the exercise is good for mum there is definitely a limit to how much, and what, she can do.”
As well as being a cutting-edge grower, and provider of new varieties, the Hacketts do a lot of trials to identify highly productive, quality strains for their own use as well as for their customers.
Most recently, Tooley Garlic has been trialling 11 garlic varieties since 2015, culled and eliminated five of those in 2021 and then started to bulk up the remaining six in the 2021 planting season.
This year is the first time the business has made any available for general purchase.
Tooley sells its garlic varieties (with plant health certificate supplied where required) to the NT, Queensland, NSW, ACT, Victoria, and SA – but not WA or Tasmania, where quarantine requirement make the final cost too much.
“We did actually get inquiries from Tasmania, but to buy 1kg of seed, this grower would have had to pay for a biosecurity officer to fly to Melbourne, then train/bus to Nyah, to test there were no bugs on, OK the order then back track back to Tasmania. It’s just a ridiculous thought.
“But we are hard up producing enough for the states we have got, without taking on anyone else,” he added.
Peter might be restricted to certain states, there are no restrictions on the research and development in which he gets engaged.
And when it comes to the biggest of the big ones, Peter doesn’t hesitate. In his mind it’s the decision made 20 years ago to start working with South Australian garlic producers Raelene and Roger Schmitke, describing Roger as the best garlic grower ever and the man who pioneered vernalisation in the garlic industry.
Peter says one of the biggest upsides of vernalisation is it retards viruses from the garlic without any negative impact on the plant.
He says viruses are always a risk for growers as the garlic already carries Leek Yellow Stripe Virus and Onion Yellow Dwarf Virus, which belong to the potyvirus group and both cause “garlic mosaic”. If they are present in combination, heavy viral loads can reduce bulb size and crop yield. It can also be transmitted by insects – and onion thrip would be the worst of the lot.
“Garlic also hates wet weather, and it can cause of serious fungal problem, although vernalised plants clearly show more resilience under these conditions,” Peter added.
“The plant needs to be in the ground for seven months plus, and, for example, I would plant my red garlic from August, with the first ones harvested in February,” he says. “The early strings will grow well until June 22, the shortest day of the year, but May and June plantings produce smaller plants and bulbs – and yield is down.”
Which goes back to those words “tricky and temperamental” when you’re in the garlic business.
“Time is incredibly unforgiving on garlic; it cuts yields enormously – we’re not talking wheat here where it basically all comes good at the same time. And with so many people wanting to buy in March and April, when you have to keep sales going and that’s hard to do right now because of no workers.
“But in the big picture, vernalising really got us out of jail for meeting market demand.”
The Hacketts first made contact with the Schmitke family in the early 1990s and Peter says since then their trust and kindness to, and helping out, each other, has been ongoing.
“Roger Schmitke’s contribution to the Australian garlic industry is unparalleled,” he says.
“Throughout his years in the industry, Roger has worn many hats, and also been a developer of relevant machinery when there was very little around.
“As president of the South Australian Garlic Association, Roger stepped in, when all state garlic associations closed, to help the Australian Garlic Industry Association in the importation of 130-plus garlic varieties from the US garlic seed bank. Many AGIA members trialled and perfected the correct times to plant various garlic, and developed a computer-controlled garlic vernalisation program, which reduced the garlic virus to the point of no impact on growth and yield.
“Roger was also asked to be a speaker at a World Allium Conference held in Adelaide 20 years ago, presenting a paper on how vernalising garlic let him achieve garlic yields of 15-20 tonne – year on year
Tooley Garlic targets the 40-70mm garlic, although some will go to 80mm-plus. Peter says many people prefer will grow to 25-30mm and smaller, but in reality, you should try not to grow them.
Instead he has focused on developing the high-yielding varieties within the options brought into Australia through its strict quarantine protocols.
“You can’t keep track of them all, but you pick up the talk here and there about which ones are doing what; but if I sell red garlic bulbs to 100 people, 80 per cent of them will rebrand it something else when they sell their crop – that’s marketing,” Peter says.
“But for Tooley Garlic, it’s got to be high yielding, that’s where you make your money.”
And Tooley Garlic is a very with-it business, a strong – and growing – online customer base that took a big jump during COVID is increasingly driving its success.
“Farmers markets and the like didn’t really do it for me – now the smallest order I will handle is 1kg, which is available for small consumers, and for the larger consumers I can do thousands of kilograms – with the seed business also expanding into the backyard market, where everybody is realising the Australian garlic is the best one for them.
“The northern hemisphere garlic really struggle here, just don’t take to the climate and the geography.
“I would say right now my business is split right down the middle, 50 per cent is garlic for eating and 50 per cent for planting.”
Now, if Peter could in some way influence the length of the day, his world would be complete.
