Northern Hemisphere Garlic Ranchers/2023 Crop

[svalli]

I think that it depends a lot of the soil type and weather. Our soil is sticky clay, which dries hard and brushing it off is difficult, so I rinse most of it before I remove the dirty and broken bulb wrappers.

[bower]

It's all about different environments and how humid is it where you put them to cure.
I don't rinse but strip them all down to a clean wrapper on the same day harvested.
I've tried several ways but waiting to remove the outer wrapper seemed to be a lot more difficult therefore more time consuming. Maybe because they are usually cured in pretty cool temperatures here, that dirty outer wrapper stays tight to the bulb and just gets harder to remove.
The other big advantage of stripping them down is that you can see right away if there are any bug damages or other conditions that you wouldn't use for seed. So I don't end up eating my best bulbs by mistake.
Those are beautiful bulbs Sari.
I'm sorry to hear about the problem with botrytis. Hopefully just related to the weather this one year, and you don't see it again.
Four year rotation seems like a long one!

[bower]

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I'm happy to report that all my early garlic crop is in and cleaned and hanging up. Much better results than last year, and delighted to see that the wider spacing and spring ferts brought the big bulbs back up to size so I have large seed for all that were smaller than normal last year. A good 2 1/2 inch wide bulbs for all the Marbled Purple Stripes and Porcelains, and also 2 inch bulbs for the Glazers.
Will be another week before I pull the late ones, and just a few left in the field growing bulbils.
Some of the small Early Purple and Kolkja Glazer had split open, so I used them fresh to make some dressings for a family gathering. It was delicious and they are so aromatic and easy to peel when fresh, I think perhaps this is exactly the reason to grow them, for the earliest fresh eating garlic.
Bearing in mind that I had smaller than normal seed for everything last fall, I'm really happy with the bulbs we have to eat this year from smaller seed. They are also bigger than last year. Good to know that a bad year is not a permanent downturn in the crop.

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[JRinPA]

Well that looks good. Lots of green leaf.

[bower]

Yeah, the tips were gone on all of the leaves. I started by pulling those with only 3 leaves left, which were a bit past prime and had some damages as it turns out. Then I pulled those with 4 leaves left, and I was satisfied with the size and condition, and finally I just pulled the lot instead of putting them through another rain which is coming tonight. Some had 5 leaves, some had 4. I didn't remove a lot of green either, because the lower yellow leaves were mostly still soft and moist enough to strip off the wrapper.
I've been told that the pulled garlic, if it's hung in a place with daylight, will actually grow while it's curing with the leaves still in place. Very subjective but I thought I saw some growth last year after hangin em.

[rxkeith]

my garlic is in except for one bulb i have left in the garden.
some really nice sized bulbs, but most are in the medium to large size range.
i did not snap scapes of most of them. i will have a large number of bulbils
available once they dry down. quite a bit of rain in july here, so i had to wait for
a drier spell. most of them were at three to five leaf stage. it did not appear to make
a difference in size. also have some nice sized rounds from last years bulbils.


keith

[JRinPA]

My bulbils to rounds in pots looks like it worked pretty good. I cut one in half to make sure it was a round. I won't play too much with the rest until planting time. Hopefully most are rounds and not bulbs. Some started to scape, but many that didn't seem to scape kept their stalks on rather than collapse over completely, so I'm not positive yet what percentage are rounds.

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[rxkeith]

the ones that did not scape should be rounds.
if they formed a scape, i bet they will be small bulbs.
thats what i get with my one variety of garlic that produces large bulbils.



keith