Northern Hemisphere Garlic Ranchers/2023 Crop

[rxkeith]

most of my garlic is up, but again there are gaps where there is nothing.
in last years patch, there are forty plants growing. how did i miss that many???
about half are single shoot. the other half are multiples of two or more shoots
indicating division into bulbs last year. i will have to rejigger how i plant most
of this years tomatoes without disturbing the garlic. i have missed bulbs in the
past, but not that many.


keith

[svalli]

Our plans for spring and beginning of summer changed, due to my DH hurting his knee, so we have visited our country side garden only once after the snow has melted. We were there three weeks ago and I removed the old hay used as winter mulch and spread a bit of calcium nitrate on the garlic bed. Quite many varieties had 100% survival after winter.

This is how it looked 3 weeks ago.

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Hopefully we can go there this coming weekend and I can plant potatoes and onions and give a bit more nitrogen to garlic.

Sari

[svalli]

@rxkeith could there be some burrowing rodents, which have moved the planted garlic cloves? I have had earlier water voles moving the planted cloves during winter and the garlic popped up in middle of grass. First I thought that they have eaten my garlic, when there was multiple plants in a row missing, but when I was mowing first time, I smelled garlic and noticed that there was garlic growing in the grass.

[bower]

Best wishes @svalli for your DH's knee recovery.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

350 + scapes clipped today.

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The Gotch

[GoDawgs]

I agree with @JRinPA , about moving this thread to the garlic section. Hard to find it otherwise!

It was garlic digging day this morning! They were planted Oct 15th. There are Russian Inferno and Siberians on the near side and Lorz Italian on the far side, yellow squash down the middle. Before digging:



I took the garlic up to the pole shed and spread it out on screens to start drying. Haven't even counted the bulbs yet but will do that tomorrow when I tidy them up a bit. Pics afterwards.

Bed after digging:



At the right end of the bed is a patch of Siberian bulbils, Year 2 of growing this batch. They're not quite ready to pull but it will be interesting to see how big they are for replanting this October.

This is a clump of six Siberians that grew from one clove planted.



That was probably a large clove that had barely started to divide and just looked like a nice size clove to plant. If the small ones haven't divided I'll replant them this fall. Or just toss them in a jar of pickles.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

I agree with @JRinPA , about moving this thread to the garlic section. Hard to find it otherwise!

I'll ask @MissS to do that, if it can be done.

You's stake yer Summer Squarsh?

The Gotch

[GoDawgs]

You's stake yer Summer Squarsh
The Gotch

Yeah, I tried it a few years ago and I find it helps keep the funk factor down since there's more airflow around the leaves. It also keeps the fruit up off the ground where crawlies might gnaw on them and leaves more space in the bed for other stuff. A win-win for me. Make that win-win-win.

In that pre-pull photo the squash on the right is regular straightneck and the other is that Smooth Criminal which is supposed to have a tendency to grow upright. Well, I did tie it to the stake at first and now it seems to be going upward so I won't do any more tying unless it acts like it wants to flop down.

[GoDawgs]

Yesterday I dug the garlic, got it cleaned up a bit and onto screens to start curing. After a week or so they'll get bundled and hung in the shed with a fan blowing air around them for about two weeks. All were planted mid October. 62 bulbs total plus a couple of bulbs already in the kitchen and some small rinky dink bulbs/rounds that came from that clump.

This is Lorz Italian in the front and Siberian in the back.



This is Russian Inferno:



Not as much as I had hoped for as there were a few cloves that never came up. We ran out of garlic about three or four weeks ago and had to buy (gasp!) some at the grocery. I have my eye on some Polish garlic to order to augment the fall planting.

And a shout out thank you to whoever moved this thread to Alliums - Garlic! Easy to find now!

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@GoDawgs "And a shout out thank you to whoever moved this thread to Alliums - Garlic! Easy to find now!"

The move (and any kudos which result therefrom) is thanks to the divine @MissS, who quickly-n-flawlessly responded to a humble request made by a site Bon Vivant/Maven...whose identity modesty prevents me from revealing...

Anywho, NICE looking bulbs! You's always whack the tops off'n the stalks right away? Is there something to that approach?

I've always left the stalks whole for the ~1st week/week-n-a-half thinking the bulb will be drawing anything good remaining in 'em; think there's anything to that?

The Gotch

[GoDawgs]

I cut off the lower dried stuff (to me they serve no purpose when already dried up) and whack the tops off at least 15" above the bulb to get rid of the mess but yet leave some stalk there with shortened leaves. Perhaps the remains of the leaves help the bulbs dry faster by sucking some of the moisture up and out? I have no idea but haven't noticed any problem with storage length or quality of the garlic. Also, the cleaned up stems provide a less messy bundle when they're hung to dry. Otherwise a bunch of that dried mess makes for a littered shed floor.

BTW, I did order a half pound of Polish garlic from Sow True Seed in Asheville, NC. They said it's also known as Polish White. I think they source it locally so it would already be somewhat accustomed to the South. It's a softneck with large cloves (none of those messy useless little cloves in the middle!). Also an artichoke type like my Lorz Italian that does well here. We'll see!

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

Pulled the 1st stalk (the bulb didn't want to let go of the life-affirming soil) and it's one of the biggest EVAH...that there's a Silver Dollar!

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The Gotch

[bower]

Scapes are just starting to emerge here - and it's even a little early for us. Switch flipped from cold to hot, got my outdoor water fixed, and they all got at least one feeding of Alaska fish ferts. When I went to do the second feeding, the front bed garlics were already nosing out scapes. So only the later bed on the back got feeding #2. Still they are looking okay and hoping for some good bulbs.

@GoDawgs I believe the Polish White is also the same as NY White, and if so it is one we've grown here, and one of my friends is still growing it. They are nice and early. Mine took a beating in cold seasons so I discontinued.

[JRinPA]

Sounds like it might rain a bit tomorrow. Maybe I should pick the rest if I can before the rain. I have not watered much, and not at all for the last few weeks. I picked the 8 or 9 roughest looking ones tonight. Plus I picked the ones at home from last year's experiment. I think I'll leave them in. The ground is really packed around them this year, they were hard to pry out, as singles through those holes.

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[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

Pulled the upper bed Garlic, if for no other reason than to have better access to a coupla Tomato plants AND clear out some space for some Waltham Butternut Squarsh that's...um...on the move.

Pleased with the results to date...GREAT drying weather, too!

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The Gotch

[svalli]

It has been three weeks since visiting my vegetable plot. Garlic bed had weeds grown through the holes in the plastic and I had to crawl on my hands and knees to get them out. I also removed most of the scapes. The leave tips have some yellow, due to the dry weather we have had. Luckily it had been rained there last week, so I did not need to do any watering.

Garlic 20230709.jpg

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

We got the largest/clove-packed bulbs from my UP dwellin' SIL.

She: "I'm not sure what it is...I got it from a friend 20+ years ago who got it from a friend, and we've been mixing other varieties in with it for years and selecting for the biggest bulbs. That's been our only source of garlic for so long that I've forgotten how it's different to other garlic. The cloves will form a hard skin as they age, they're just so juicy when fresh that the skin stays succulent."

The cloves don't have the hard "shell/skin" around them, which makes one wonder how they store; anyone know what variety that is?

The Gotch

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

The unnamed variety is no longer; we've decided to call it ¡Keweenaw Maravillosa!.

Seeing yer in that neck of the woods, you's on board with that, @rxkeith...?

The Gotch

[rxkeith]

sounds kinda fancy for the keweenaw. we're just mostly plain folks here, but your call.
have you seen what size bulbils it forms? you can rule out some varieties by the size of them.
rule out elephant garlic. they form large bulbs. never grown it, so don't know if they flower or
form bulbils or if it will even grow in the keweenaw.
music forms very large bulbs, and is a popular variety here. there is a light pink on their wrappers.
garlic here at home is scaping out. i need to snap most of them off still for a tide me over until the current
crop is ready to pull.


keith

[JRinPA]

It has been three weeks since visiting my vegetable plot. Garlic bed had weeds grown through the holes in the plastic and I had to crawl on my hands and knees to get them out. I also removed most of the scapes. The leave tips have some yellow, due to the dry weather we have had. Luckily it had been rained there last week, so I did not need to do any watering.

Garlic 20230709.jpg

@svalli Svalli that looks like good spacing with your black mulch. How wide is that black plastic and what is the spacing and distance between rows?

I've been planting through black like that the last few years but using the double row spacing already in place for that row. All my row lengths vary so I have one black mulch devoted for each. For garlic, I think I should make a custom piece and move it around with the garlic as it moves rows.

I had one thick plantain grow through next to a garlic that was a real bear to get out. But it sure is nice to only have a few weeds in the holes compared to an open ground patch.