Haaseford Farms Visit

The Organics team recently visited local family business, Haaseford Farms who grow organic garlic at Ironbank in the Adelaide Hills. Raelee and Damien Basford grow garlic here without any chemicals or pesticides and it hasn’t travelled far to reach your shopping basket! 

Haaseford Farms is run by Raelee and Damien along with his parents Rachel and Michael. Their organic garlic wakes up the tastebuds with its clean and intense flavours. The three main varieties grown at Haaseford are Australian white garlic (strong in flavour) , Flinders Island garlic (complex, subtle flavour) and Russian or Elephant garlic (more mild in flavour).

They do everything by hand from the planting to mulching, harvesting and even cleaning every single garlic bulb with a brush and gloves! 

Growing garlic is a rewarding process but requires patience.

“You pull the garlic apart, take the best cloves and you plant these and as the season goes on, they put up shoots and divide,” Raelee says.

“The garlic grows for about 7 or 8 months and once finished, the leaves start to die off. When there are about five healthy leaves left, that’s when we harvest it.”

Raelee also makes jars of homemade minced organic garlic which is quick and easy for home cooks.