Former chef Cody Lee Meyer has channeled his passion for new foods into growing experimental crops on Kauai that haven’t had much success in the islands.
His work growing garlic is showing how a crop dependent on both winter frost and 14 hours of daily sunlight could find a place in Hawaii’s farms and gardens.
Meyer came to understand garlic’s idiosyncrasies by planting pots of garlic on his front porch in 2013, and in three years was growing enough to start selling to local chefs. Since becoming farm manager in 2017 for Timbers Kauai, a 450-acre resort in Lihue, he’s been able to expand production gradually to 200 pounds last year.
“Fresh garlic, straight out of the ground and in the mouth is how we eat it, and there is no comparison to any other garlic you’ll find at the supermarket,” Meyer said.
Commonly sold in Hawaii stores are the silverskin or artichoke types of garlic, imported from California or elsewhere. Meyer has been experimenting with other varieties, and last spring’s purple stripe was his most successful so far. Chefs around the islands who cooked with it praised its mellow, less pungent flavor compared with imported garlic.
This year, Meyer is planting types including Music and German white, considered “porcelain” garlics that are more robust and produce larger bulbs.
Demand for his garlic far exceeds the supply he is able to produce. He supplies Timbers’ Hualani Restaurant, resort residents and the Slow Island Food & Beverage Co., which makes garlic salt and sauce. Edible Hawaiian Magazine distributes some to chefs.
“The garlic is harvested one time a year and it sells out before we even plant it,” he said. “I encourage other farmers to grow it so we can ‘feed the need.’”
That might be easier said than done.
“Garlic is a challenge to grow due to its climatic requirement,” said Jensen Uyeda, an extension agent of the University of Hawaii’s College of Tropical Agriculture and Human Resources.
“Garlic requires a winter frost after planting to stimulate the bulb to generate cloves. Since we don’t have this winter frost in Hawaii we have to artificially expose the seed material to cold temperatures to trick it into thinking it’s winter.”
On Oahu, UH has been testing this approach, growing garlic successfully for three years at the Poamoho Research Station in Waialua. Uyeda said his hope is that with this knowledge, more local farmers will take on the crop. Two farms have started growing porcelain garlic this year: Counter Culture Organic Farm in Waialua and Kupa‘a Farms in Kula, Maui, he said.
Gerry Ross, co-owner of Kupa‘a Farms with his wife, Janet, said the UH experiments on chilling the garlic were a “game-changer” in his decision to plant a German porcelain white garlic last month — “we’re not risking income loss.”
Ross has been experimenting with a dozen varieties of garlic for years, drawn to the idea of growing a food popular with locals but that has to be imported. So far he has only been successful with elephant garlic, which is not a true garlic but a member of the leek family. Kupa‘a has produced the baseball-sized bulbs for 14 years, selling about 500 pounds of it in a good year. While it’s commonly believed that elephant garlic isn’t as sharp as regular garlic, he said, his standby crop is “pretty snappy” and a good substitute.
His customers appreciate his elephant garlic because it’s grown locally and organically, and they like knowing the farmer who grows their food, Ross added.
Meyer had been told for years that it was impossible to grow garlic in Hawaii, mainly since it lacks the combination of winter cold and, as the crop matures, 14 hours of daily sunlight. Old UH reports that he read were discouraging, as were other farmers he consulted. His Kauai farming mentor, Phil Sheldon, who once grew garlic in California, was one of them. But Meyer was determined to find a way because he thought everything seems to grow well in Hawaii.
Five years ago, he started experimenting with putting his “seeds” (actually cloves of garlic) in hibernation in a dark chiller for two months, planting the seedlings right after the winter solstice Dec. 21. He could not compensate for the shorter sunlight hours — Hawaii gets at most 12-1/2 hours per day at the peak of summer — resulting in smaller bulbs. But last year he tried a method a co-worker told him is practiced in the Philippines. Eight weeks after the plants went into the ground, he dug around each one so that more of the bulb was exposed to the sun’s energy. This increased the size of the bulbs and his yield greatly, he said.
“Garlic almost has a mind of its own,” Meyer said, so farmers need to work with it and understand its needs.
Meyer, an Ohio native who studied geography, moved to Hawaii in 2010 after cooking for eco-lodges from Alaska to Costa Rica to Antarctica, roaming to the most remote parts of the world to learn about different foods. After joining Timbers Kauai, he created the resort’s 16.5-acre Farm at Hokuala on overgrown golf course greens. The farm, mostly planted in fruit trees, primarily serves the resort’s restaurant and residents. “We use no herbicides or chemicals, just organic chicken fertilizer, and we hand-weed everything,” he said.
Less than an eighth of an acre is devoted to garlic, one of 30 crops he tends in a 2-acre chef’s garden for the resort. Overall, he’s planted more than 100 different crops on the farm at Timbers, including difficult -to-grow echinacea, lavender, blackberries and grapes.
His goal is not to become the premier garlic grower in the state, but to keep learning what works, and hope other farmers find more cost-effective ways to grow it commercially. Already he’s looking beyond the horizon to growing organic grapes to make wine, and may dive into ginseng and green tea this year, he said.
“I have fun doing new things to keep it exciting, you know?”
CHEFS GIVE GARLIC HIGH MARKS
Edible Hawaiian Islands Magazine shared shipments of locally grown purple stripe garlic with several chefs throughout the state, and asked them to compare it to the imported garlic commonly found in supermarkets.
The eight chefs — including Krista Garcia of The Treehouse at the Hotel Wailea on Maui, Stephen Rouelle of Under the Bodhi Tree on Hawaii Island and Mark Noguchi of Chef Hui on Oahu — all raved about it.
They were impressed with the garlic’s overall appearance, and all said they would purchase it if available. They compared its flavor both raw and cooked in their own recipes. Most thought the garlic was “sweet” eaten raw, though a few judged it spicy.
Most of the chefs sampled a garlic called chesnok red (a subcategory of the purple stripe variety), grown by Cody Lee Meyer of Timbers Kauai. Meyer said that variety is almost like a Hawaiian chile pepper: “It starts out spicy when raw, but once you roast it, it gets sweet.”
The flavor also strengthens if it’s harvested in June instead of earlier in the season; the chefs received garlic picked in mid-April,he said.
Jana McMahon, a private chef for 16 years on Maui and author of the blog Jana Eats, summed up the raw garlic: “The flavor was a revelation. Intense, bright garlic-y pow without the bite or bitterness.” Of the cooked garlic, she said, “The heady garlic flavor held its own when heated, while mellowing during the cooking process. It was delicious.”
McMahon said the locally grown bulbs were perfect for this dressing, but that regular imported garlic can be substituted without altering the recipe.
LEMON GARLIC DRESSING
- 1/4 cup “magic” lemon oil (see note)
- 1 cup organic olive oil
- Juice of 1 large lemon
- 1 teaspoon sea salt
- 1/4 cup peeled garlic cloves
Process all ingredients in a blender at high speed until well emulsified, and garlic cloves are well blended.
>> NOTE: To make lemon oil, emulsify 1 Meyer lemon (including skin and pulp), 2 cups olive oil and 1 teaspoon salt in a high-power blender.
