Northern Hemisphere Garlic Ranchers/2025 Crop

[JRinPA]

I got it in yesterday, one row with ~300 cloves, another row with ~200 bulbils. We'll see how they compare. I simply broadforked four lanes of holes, so spacing is 4" tine spacing in the row and then 10" between rows. Drip will be set between rows 1-2 and 3-4. Cloves went in fairly easily, I pushed them root inboard and laying on their back instead of root down. The ground was wet and not that cold. Bulbils I just dropped in the tine hole, same spacing. Some concern that some bulbils fell too deep - perhaps I should have forked at half depth. Oh well. Both rows were covered with leaves to finish.

Took about 3 hours and the only problem was the rain kept coming and going. Last night I started a sore throat, may or may not be related to 3 hrs cold/wet. It was only the top of my head that was wet.

I am looking forward to the comparison between good cloves and bulbils. For each bulb opened I may only get 3 or 4 cloves on average. The others are now loose for eating, but, they don't last as long that way. If I could get decent bulbs here from December planted bulbils, that would be awesome. I don't like the method for growing them in stages and requiring storage/replant.

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[rxkeith]

what size bulbils did you plant?

i have one type of garlic that produces large pea or marble sized bulbils.
they produce either large rounds or small bulbs. i can tell what they will be
by the top growth. the bulbs will produce a scape. the rounds will have shorter
top growth. you have to pull the rounds before the leaves die or you will miss them.
large bulbils i will space about 4 inches apart. the smaller ones i lightly sprinkle in
the row. depth about the same as bulbs. what comes up, comes up.
i have mulched with leaves before. its better to shred them first before mulching
other wise garlic shoots start growing along the ground instead of up if you don't
pull the leaves back in time. shredded leaves stay in place better.
amp up your vitamin c for a few days. try to plant in november.


keith

[JRinPA]

Keith you are a sharp operator. Good point about the leaves, they are not shredded yet, didn't have time. They were leave vacced and piled on an empty plot. When I get to shred over there I planned to run those right through and back onto the rows. If not I usually rake back around Mar 1st.

November would work, though December is fine for clove planting. November is too busy though. Most bulbils were under dime size. Cold Eeze is my go to for this situation. Lot of people sick at work last week/this week.

[MissS]

@rxkeith sent me a bunch of bubils of various sizes last year. I had some disease in my soil so I did a series of bleach treatments and then had to ammend my soil and re-introduce mycos and bacteria. Once I finished that, I planted these tiny bubils in February. Most of them produced scapes which I picked off. When I went to lift my garlic, I did not find a single round. All of the little bubils produced beautiful and some of them, very large heads of garlic.

I will say that I was amazed at the size of the roots that the garlic made. Some of the roots were 2-2.5' long. Is this normal or was this due to my soft soil or the mycos?

[JayneR13]

@MissS I've seen garlic make some pretty large root balls. I don't use mycos on my garlic (probably should) but I do plant with some chicken poo and work the soil so it's a bit softer. While my root balls haven't been super long, they've been pretty dense. I count it as normal.