Garlic

PhilaGardener said:

I've gotten into trouble at times too - in wet, rainy years I've lost all my garlic, onions and potatoes, even with raised beds. Too much clay soil and rain doesn't lead to good outcomes. That said, the good years can be great and keep me going but I am slowly cutting back.

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Question, please.

I have had years where I seriously considered building a ark, so when we relocated our veggie beds, I was mulling over ways to address that issue.

I have removable hoops that I used this year that started with row cover (and spring clamps to hold it on) and once it warmed up enough, deer netting for the summer. When weather predicted long periods of rain, I added sheet plastic over the deer netting to prevent drowning, and took it off when the major rains let up. The beds did OK (until some critter got in the ends of the deer netting and ate really well) so I figured I did the right thing.

Is there an easier alternative to this? I am very open to suggestions to make things quicker, easier, and more productive.

flowerbug said:

i was pretty worried two season's ago with all the rain we had and the heavy soil but the garlic came through all that ok. this past summer the garlic got lifted in time and was in ok condition when i was checking it out yesterday. a few bulbs are always earlier than the others and the tunics might not be in the best of condition, but i'll just eat those first and i don't pick from those for replanting as i'm hoping to encourage better tunics and more uniform finishing up time, but i've been growing this garlic for 15 years at least and it keeps on going fine even in the backup patch where i completely ignore it for years other than cutting the scapes off it so it isn't spreading bulbules around.

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Tunics?

Zeedman said:

Tunics?

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bulb wrapper.

This thread has been an eye opener for me.
I love garlic, life without it would be unimaginable.
I grow Elephant, a red skinned and a white- no idea what their names are.

My soil is very free draining/volcanic silt, i'm told so I dont need to worry about it drowning.
I plant the corms very carefully, in that I dont just drive them into the ground, I use a dibble to make a shallow hole and gently place them in so they are just poking out of the ground, not sitting on top like I have seen some people here say how to plant them.

Here we are told to plant them on the shortest day, but one year with my work load, I had to plant them out early-end of April which for me means mid/late fall. so that would be 2 months early. They did so well that I now always plant them out that early.

A couple of years ago, I put them around a bed that I had sowed down with winter barley, not realising that it can fall over and smother other plants and lost most of them.
I didnt want to buy in new stock so just kept going with the ones I had and we ate the ones that I didnt think were good enough for 'seed'..... so this year I only have 20 Elephant and 20 soft neck plants.

Most of the Elephant garlic are looking good but alot of the others just seemed to stop growing and I'm not too sure why that is. Their stalks are still really skinny, so they are labelled for the pot.

My favorite, has to be the Elephant garlic, mainly because it gives me more options and has a more delicate flavor, if you say that about garlic!
I can chop and crush it up up with equal amounts of fresh,(or in my case) frozen ginger...or I can drop peeled cloves into soups and stew or just roast them as a vegetable-dont need long...or I can chop the top off, drizzle with Olive oil and grill til soft. mmm starting to get hungry thinking about it.

My Error

Ridgerunner said:

My Error

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?

I posted something and decided to un-post it.

Garlic doesn't do very well for me. Partly it's recent climate changes (winter is now so irregular that the plants never actually die back, they just sort of linger on and end up burning up the bulbs over the winter so they don't have any energy in the spring) and partly impatience (I'm used to re-doing my garden from scratch every year, and garlic works best if you put it somewhere and leave it alone for 5-6 years.

I am however interested in trying some of the odder wild garlics. In particular, Sacred Succulents has seed for quite a few Caucasian wild Alliums that are very cold hard and sound like good choices.

Pulsegleaner said:

Garlic doesn't do very well for me. Partly it's recent climate changes (winter is now so irregular that the plants never actually die back, they just sort of linger on and end up burning up the bulbs over the winter so they don't have any energy in the spring) and partly impatience (I'm used to re-doing my garden from scratch every year, and garlic works best if you put it somewhere and leave it alone for 5-6 years.

I am however interested in trying some of the odder wild garlics. In particular, Sacred Succulents has seed for quite a few Caucasian wild Alliums that are very cold hard and sound like good choices.

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this is all very strange to me. have you ever tried any hard neck garlics? if you PM me your address i have some bulbules i can send you to try out. they are completely cold hardy, no mulch, i replant them each year and they do fine.

i've never had very large bulbs or cloves from garlic left alone in the same place for any number of years beyond 3. starting from the smallest bulbule the first season often the bulb will be a single. replant that and then it will divide the next season. unlikely to be a huge bulb, but a dozen cloves is a nice progression in amounts. if you leave that bulb alone and all those cloves sprouting next to each other there is too much competition for nutrients/water in a small area so they won't get as big as they might if you'd lifted them and divided them and planted only the largest cloves. by the fourth and fifth year you should be up to full sized bulbs and depending upon your spacing, water, light, soil, nutrients and weeding you can improve upon average and get some portion of your harvest toward large cloves.

the garlic i've been growing here for 15 or more years can end up giving cloves as big as my thumbs or even bigger. i can get bulbules as big as a quarter from the biggest bulbs i grow and this is on top of what the bulbs do below in the ground. if you PM me before i get rid of all the bulbs i have i can even send you some large cloves for seed garlic planting which will speed up you getting some larger results.

Ridgerunner said:

I posted something and decided to un-post it.

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ok!