Garlic guru Don Christopher is putting the garlic back in Gilroy
after the town’s signature crop began migrating to the San Joaquin
Valley about 25 years ago.
Garlic guru Don Christopher is putting the garlic back in Gilroy after the town’s signature crop began migrating to the San Joaquin Valley about 25 years ago. When white rot, a type of fungus that can wipe out entire harvests, hit the garlic crop in Gilroy, growers moved the garlic fields to the Central Valley, Christopher explained.
Now that Gilroy’s soil has had time to recover and local growers are expressing a desire to bring the crop home, the Garlic Capital of the World is host to about 400 acres of garlic fields, up from a meager 70 acres a couple years ago. Drought conditions in the Central Valley also helped convince Christopher to give Gilroy another go, he said.
“It’s excellent,” said Christopher, who’s been in the garlic business for 53 years, of this year’s harvest. “I love to see it’s back in Gilroy.”
