A HOME vegetable garden has been turned into a multi-award winning garlic farm.
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Anna King first planted garlic at her Moyston property in 2010.
“We started off with growing tiny quantities,” she said.
“It wasn’t our intention to have a business at the outset.”
The farm started to produced not only garlic, but other vegetables and fruit as well as eggs for business purposes in 2014.
Ms King started to focus on garlic after her husband David Herbert noted its success.
“My husband said, ‘you do really well with garlic’,” she said.
“You run risk of not doing anything terribly well if you don’t hone your focus.”
Ms King runs the farm with the help of David and two children, Angel, 14, and Jude, 11.
Wildes Lane Farm was a double gold medallist in the 2017 Australian Food Awards for champion Australian fresh produce and champion garlic.
These awards were announced earlier this year.
Ms King said this year was the first time the farm entered the awards.
“It didn’t occur to me not to enter the awards,” she said.
“Why wouldn’t you want to know what your produce is like?”
The farm’s gold award winning garlic was their Spanish Roja variety.
Ms King said that variety of garlic had an intense flavour and heat to it, as well as a subtly.
“This garlic is a creole type of garlic,” she said.
Ms King is on the board of the Australian Garlic Industry Association.
“The association is trying to raise public awareness of the different types of garlic,” she said.
“There are garlics from the subtropical artichoke group, which are the first ones out of the ground usually in early November.
“There are turban groups of garlic, which is the major commercial variety.
“The other commercial variety are garlics from the regular artichoke group and there are the not as common varieties.”
The soil at Wildes Lane Farm is a heavy clay.
Ms King said it was more challenging then sandy soil.
“But my preference is clay because it holds on to water and nourishment,” Ms King said.
“The climate is fairly severe here. It’s cool and then it gets really hot.
“So you have to have the toughest of tough plants that survive firstly and then produce a yield.”
While her main focus is garlic, she also grows vegetables, fruit and breed poultry.
She sells produce at Pomonal Village Market and Moyston General Store.
“I hope one day this area will have a ‘grow food slow scene’ here,” Ms King said.