Montana woman turns garlic-growing hobby into thriving business

BOZEMAN — What started as a small gardening experiment for Gae Bjorklund has grown into a thriving business supplying garlic to customers across the country.

“It was just kind of by accident,” Bjorklund said.

Fifteen years ago, she set out to learn how to grow garlic. Now, her garage and barn are packed with thousands of pounds of the crop.

“I learned the planting, the whole process. I scaled up my inventory, found the varieties that I wanted to grow that did well here. Pretty soon, I had way more garlic than we could use,” Bjorklund said.

That surplus inspired the launch of Montana Stinking Rose, a marketplace where she sells and advertises seed-grade garlic to gardeners nationwide.

“They are asking questions on how to grow it, when to harvest scapes, when to cure it,” she said.

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