Weather Where You Are

[digitS']

@Ridgerunner did you know that @ninnymary 's hardiness zone is 10a while yours is now 9a? I think those are right, having looked up Mary's city zip code on:
https://planthardiness.ars.usda.gov

I don't have any experience with gardening in such warm winters and almost no experience with growing garlic ... with all the onions in my garden, it's true! I'm just wondering about growing and storage in these circumstances. I'd think that I'd be turning green myself, if I made the mistake of sitting quietly for too long.

Weather! The WS and teevee people continue to think that with all this sunshine and quiet weather, I shouldn't be seeing frost every morning. Almost got it right with only 31° this morning. No frost looks increasingly possible with a "chance" of rain running through 48 hours beginning Thursday. Keeping my fingers are cr4#oss/+ed!5

Steve

 

[ninnymary]

Steve,

I don’t get frost till about March. Wonder when Ridge will get his?

Mary

 

[Ridgerunner]

Steve,

I don’t get frost till about March. Wonder when Ridge will get his?

Mary

I also wonder. When I was down here before we might have a frost/freeze late November, maybe not until February/March time. I remember picking up the in-laws at the airport one Christmas with snow on the ground and and water mains burst so no water. We get hard freezes so seldom that the water mains with tie-in valves cross over the drainage ditches and drainage canals. The still water in those valves can freeze and burst the pipe. The first time we hosted the in-laws for Christmas and I had to haul water from a friend's swimming pool to flush the toilets. Some outstanding memories.

Then some winters the peppers and tomatoes don't die. No serious frosts.

I'm across the Mississippi and in a different micro-climate. I think it might be a bit warmer. From the planting guide the earliest recommended time to transplant tomatoes to the garden is March 1 for what that is worth.

That looks like the same link I used to come up with Zone 9A. It's based on minimum average winter temperature. It does not take into account the summer temperatures which may be pretty different from Mary to me.

 

[flowerbug]

That is still a lot of garlic. I’m surprised you can make it last long enough to use some for planting again. My homegrown garlic doesn’t last that long before it starts sprouting.

Mary

dark and as cool as you can get it but not frozen. i've only grown hardnecked garlic here which keeps until Jan-Feb if i don't bring it in the house and the garage doesn't get too cold. some years i get antsy for something to do in the mid-winter and take any that is left and process it somehow. garlic relish, ground garlic, whatever i can come up with...

one winter i made about 10 quarts of garlic relish and it took several years before i found someone who liked to eat it as much as i did. they took a case of pints off my hands. it took a lot of time to peel all that garlic as almost all of it was leftovers from weeding it out of a garden (i'm still trying to clear it out of). i had several five gallon buckets full of bulbs the size of golf balls, so all those cloves were pretty tiny to peel. i think that is what finally got me going on eating it green instead. a lot easier to process and perfectly yummy.

 

[digitS']

I cannot imagine 10 quarts of garlic relish, @flowerbug ! It would give me heartburn just seeing something like that.

It's based on minimum average winter temperature. It does not take into account the summer temperatures which may be pretty different from Mary to me.

It's a problem for the thinking of gardeners everywhere in the US. Unless they move around and garden in different locations OR communicate with gardeners about their seasonal gardening experiences, they tend to credit these USDA zones as providing more information than they really do.

They are average extreme minimums. They are useful when perennial plants are being considered. They do not take into account the entire growing season. When the designations are for temperatures near or below zero Fahrenheit, they account for a big 0% of the growing season.

Canadian zones are supposed to take some of these other growing season factors into account. I don't know if that is explained somewhere.

For all domestic plants, we could use classifications of "gardening biomes."

Comparisons of domestic crops relative to the Köppen climate classification doesn't look like it would be too difficult and I bet that it has been done. Where?

Steve

 

[Ridgerunner]

Steve, I consider the zones useful when looking at perennials, especially fruit trees. When I was in Arkansas I was on the border or 6/7 so the only fruit or nut trees I got had to be good for 5, 6, 7, and 8, all of those, unless it was something I was just playing around with because it might be neat. For annuals the zones mean nothing to me.

 

[Zeedman]

@ninnymary , the problem with garlic size certainly isn't your weather. I went to the Gilroy garlic festival in the 80's, when I lived in San Jose... they had some amazing garlic, and their climate is very similar to yours. Maybe spacing? Garlic has a large root system, and for good-sized bulbs, the best spacing is 8-12" each way. Garlic also needs full sun to reach its full potential, especially during bulb formation.

With the softnecks they say to plant the larger outside cloves and not the interior small ones. Skeptical and cynical as I am I experimented, I planted the larger ones in one area and the smaller ones right next to them but on one end a couple of different years. I did not see any difference in productivity. @Zeedman have you played with that? I did notice that if you plant them in a relatively thick bed, the ones in the middle did not produce nearly as well as the ones on the edges. I don't know if that is a competition for sunlight, nutrients, or water, maybe all three, but I learned to not crowd them too much.

Since I never plant the small inner cloves of the artichoke garlic, I have no basis for comparison. However, some years the artichoke garlic produces "stem bulbils", and I planted some of those along with the normal cloves... the bulbils produced a bulb the first year, about 1/2 the size of the bulbs from full-sized cloves. I've also noticed that artichoke garlic varieties return to full size quickly, if the cloves are small due to a bad year.

There are a few artichoke garlic varieties which form nearly full-sized cloves even in the center; Ron's Single Center (a.k.a. Trueheart) is one of those.

One more observation about artichoke garlic. Those varieties are much more tolerant of weed pressure than the hard neck types; they will form at least a fair sized bulb even if surrounded by weeds. Hard neck garlics under the same conditions will form a very small bulb, and will then take several years to size up again. Ask me how I know this.

The hard neck garlic types (rocambole, porcelain, and purple stripe) are generally more reliable in cold climates, and have larger cloves. Artichoke varieties can be temperamental when exposed to bad weather... but in a good year, they will out-perform the hard necks. Because they produce so many cloves, a smaller percentage needs to be held back for planting, leaving lots more to be eaten.

 

[flowerbug]

I cannot imagine 10 quarts of garlic relish, @flowerbug ! It would give me heartburn just seeing something like that.

it's making me hungry for a saurkraut and garlic relish hot dog at the moment. i'll just have to pretend this cold cereal is something else... going to have to switch to oatmeal soon.

 

[flowerbug]

@ninnymary , the problem with garlic size certainly isn't your weather. I went to the Gilroy garlic festival in the 80's, when I lived in San Jose... they had some amazing garlic, and their climate is very similar to yours. Maybe spacing? Garlic has a large root system, and for good-sized bulbs, the best spacing is 8-12" each way. Garlic also needs full sun to reach its full potential, especially during bulb formation.

Since I never plant the small inner cloves of the artichoke garlic, I have no basis for comparison. However, some years the artichoke garlic produces "stem bulbils", and I planted some of those along with the normal cloves... the bulbils produced a bulb the first year, about 1/2 the size of the bulbs from full-sized cloves. I've also noticed that artichoke garlic varieties return to full size quickly, if the cloves are small due to a bad year.

There are a few artichoke garlic varieties which form nearly full-sized cloves even in the center; Ron's Single Center (a.k.a. Trueheart) is one of those.

One more observation about artichoke garlic. Those varieties are much more tolerant of weed pressure than the hard neck types; they will form at least a fair sized bulb even if surrounded by weeds. Hard neck garlics under the same conditions will form a very small bulb, and will then take several years to size up again. Ask me how I know this.

The hard neck garlic types (rocambole, porcelain, and purple stripe) are generally more reliable in cold climates, and have larger cloves. Artichoke varieties can be temperamental when exposed to bad weather... but in a good year, they will out-perform the hard necks. Because they produce so many cloves, a smaller percentage needs to be held back for planting, leaving lots more to be eaten.

i've been gradually increasing the space between the hard neck garlic i plant as i've been planting less of it. when i was growing a lot more for green garlic i'd plant that closer together as i knew it wasn't going to be in the ground that long. i have no idea what variety i have other than it is about 100yrs old and pretty strong/hot.

looks like a rocambole variety...

 

[digitS']

That's right, @Zeedman , Gilroy! I remember driving through and the garlic odors ... wow ... must have been there at the right time.

Wrong times in Walla Walla, once or twice. I've enjoyed that town and area but after the onion harvest and as what is left begins to decay ..! Oh, and when the farmers put the liquid nitrogen on the fields ... ammonia!

Maybe that's what is needed for Mary's garlic. What did Jerry Baker call ammonia, "a lightning storm in a bottle?"

Steve