Gateway Garlic Farms

09/23/2026

Right now, as you are reading, this soil is being created right outside your back door

The workers of the soil production are the great humus magicians of planet Earth :
1. Bacteria
2. Insects
3. Worms
4. Mycelium

They created all the dirt across our land masses and constructed the soil that feeds us. Organic contractors , they alone began building our soils long before the dinosaurs walked the earth and will continue to do so after we are gone. This is not your world but it is theirs for they built it. Without them you would never have come into existence but without you they would continue to thrive. It is an insanity that can only be explained as su***de to poison their world and to destroy their ability to do this beautiful job that they have done since life on earth began. You have never paid them and they have never taken a day off. They owe you nothing and you owe them everything, so it's about time we gave them a big round of applause

09/23/2026

On this day 3 Years ago , a bunch of friends helped me close down the last urban farm and breakdown a poly tunnel for transport .
It’s kinda apropos because next month we’ll wrap that very tunnel up at the new farm for wintertime growing
I doubled the size by adding more ribs and it will be put into wintertime production and cloning for spring

The man you see in burgundy and directly in front of my son ( who is on a ladder ) is my longtime friend Don Don .
We go WAY back into prehistory as youngsters just growing up 😆
You’ll never find a more honest and trustworthy human as he .
Plus he can do like 100 cartoon voices 😆
He’s one of a handful of the greatest people on earth who helped me in this transition to the new farm .
All this month I’ll be highlighting these awesome folks who helped me and I am super grateful that they are in my life

09/23/2026

THE STRANGE CASE OF CALIGULA’S COFFEE TABLE ?

In 2013, Dario Del Bufalo, an Italian expert on ancient marble and stone, was signing copies of his book Porphyry in New York when he overheard a shocking conversation. Two people paging through the volume had spotted a photo of a Roman mosaic that disappeared toward the end of World War II. Suddenly, one of them exclaimed, “Oh, Helen, look, that’s your mosaic.”

Dario couldn’t believe what he had heard until it sunk in and by that time the two ladies had disappeared.

He ended up tracking them down but here’s the backstory and it goes way back.
I mean way back

Emperor Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus also known as Caligula built two massive ships on lake Nemi during his reign .
One of the ships was a temple to Diana and the other was a pleasure palace.
Both of the ships were probably sunk after Caligula was assassinated almost 2000 years ago.
Excavated by the Italian dictator Mussolini , they discovered a dance floor that had a stunning mosaic on it. Before the end of World War II, the mosaic disappeared.
Then years later its remade into a coffee table
Purchased by art dealer Helen Fioratti and her husband from aristocratic Italian family, they used it as a coffee table in their New York City apartment for 45 years !
Seized in 2017 ,  the family was never prosecuted for what was characterized as an innocent purchase.
It has been returned to Italy and sits in the museum. 
Sadly, a fire destroyed the ships that sat in the museum that were built for them but this mosaic shows no evidence of fire damage. This means that the mosaic disappeared when it was first dug up and probably never made it into the museum to begin with .

The ships were massive, and were the largest ships of their time
The larger of the 2 ships was 73 m (240 ft) in length, with a beam of 24 m (79 ft). The other ship was 70 m (230 ft) long, with a beam (width) of 20 m (66 ft).


09/23/2026

Planting Garlic next weekend and although we do mechanically plant , some varieties will be hand planted due to the limited amount of seed per variety
My top forty are mechanically planted because it’s easier to manage very large amounts of seed that way but the bulk of my variety list is hand planted .
I’ll be using the biodegradable black plastic seen here and using roller punches and hand dibblers , like this one .
I’ll also be using SunBelt mulch from DeWitt and I’m very excited about this . I believe I’m going to end up moving into Sunbelt everywhere  because it’s a pretty awesome product

I plant between 10 and 16 cm , 4 to 6 inches , in staggered rows at a depth of 5 cm or 2 inches on top of the seed . I don’t go any deeper than that because I found it unnecessary in my climate. You can actually plant as deep as you want because in some of the Garlic experiments we ran we’ve grow bulbs at a depth of 25 cm or 10 inches. The big problem with the deeper you go is the deeper you have to dig to get it out.

At my 5 cm depth I find that I can pluck the garlic out by hand easily after a good rain or irrigating a day or two before .

I cover with a layer of straw and the straw that I target is always at least two years old.
Why two years old you ask? Because all of the w**d and wheat seeds that were still trapped inside the bale germinated and died the year before. 😀
Using fresh straw might look awesome but that usually means heavy w**d and grass pulling the next year .
I basically use big round bales that I could roll out like carpet because ….. That’s how I roll, literally !😀

Of course for novice planters you should always be putting your garlic in “point up” but in some of the experiments we’ve ran we found out that Garlic always righted itself.

Garlic, like all alliums are shallow rooters and don’t need deep soil.

I like this mulch because I’m a big fan of using fresh manure underneath, killing w**d potential in the spring . The reason I use fresh manure is because it has a low available nutrient level when planting bud by spring time it’s Potential nutrition exponentially rises and this has reduced my need for running any fertilizer in the spring.
Unless your soil is extremely depleted of nutrition you can usually get away with planting them and worry about fertilizing them in the spring. You should remember that Garlic is a hungry monster when it comes to nutrition and requires a full balance of the macro and micro nutrients.
Sulfur is an important component of allium soils and although it’s classified as a micro nutrient it should be classified as a macro nutrient alongside NPK .
This is why fresh manures are awesome because of their higher sulfur content . I often use amendment tees created from hog and chicken manure for this very reason.

The addition of sulfur does not grow bigger bulbs but it is important component in bulb development and of heat level .

You can also buy pelleted and raw sulfur from your garden centers to add that as an amendment if your soil is depleted .

Unlike my vegetable rows where iuse this mulch on ,there is no drip tape running underneath these garlic rows . This is because I always run overhead irrigation on Garlic.
Why is that? Because of onion thrips. Onion thrips are a pest that targets allium stems and they drill through them killing the plant. Overhead irrigation acts like a pesticide to the thrips killing them.
In all of the years I’ve been growing garlic in the St. Louis region I have never had a problem with onion thrips but I never will because of this
I have been known to run drip tape for supplementary nutrition. If I feel the field will not have enough potential nutrition next spring. When I do this, I’m always running a compost or manure tea

I usually plant between the autumn equinox and samhain which culminates at the first weekend of November. There are some people out there who say you should plant in November but that weather can always be hit or miss and sometimes it could be super cold. If you are up north, you probably have snow by this time already . Getting your seed in early will not harm it and will help you get a jump on the game

Some people who want a jump on the game will pre-soak their cloves for 12-24 hours for faster germination.  this of course makes more sense if you are in a colder climate and you are starting late otherwise it isn’t necessary if you’re planting now in my climate zone here in the central Midwest.

I’ll still be selling seed for the next few weeks and you can find out more on how you can order from us by clicking this post



09/23/2026

Alrighty then !!!!
Pizza is ready
One has pepperoni , mushrooms and cheese and the other has that with olives and tomatoes too .

I’ll put a rolled out dough pic in the comment section below

09/22/2026

Hey crochet enthusiasts
These ARE AWESOME !!!

Crochet hook restocking today. Getting ready for Raggz Fiber Fest October 31st. 💀

09/22/2026

I’m making Italian sheet pan pizza

My sourdough culture ( lower right ) is a maintained native French yeast from Avergne .
This same culture I use for bread and, like tonight , my pizza bread .

I take out a portion , feed it with a little sugar and some flour the night before I plan on using it .

Adding flour , more sugar , fresh herbs from the garden , garlic and of course olive oil ( upper pic )

Thyme , oregano and plenty of basil
Mixed and kneaded ( lower left ) it’s put into the oven for rising before rolling it out .

I heat the oven to 110°F and then turn it off. I cover the bowl with a hot wet rag and put the bowl inside .
The residual dwindling heat is adequate for awesome rise for me . 

09/22/2026

Johnny come latelys and with me it was too much ….too late .
Animal shelters were a nightmare to deal with and I bypassed them all together .
The rings they expected you to jump through to adopt cats were equivalent to getting a US Treasury security clearance …. And I know cause I’ve had one 😂
I am now content with my herd of cats and the mice population are non existent

09/22/2026

Hi
My name is Mark and I’m a big fan of eastern white pines
I really need to plant a bunch of them on my farm

09/22/2026

Right?? 😀