Not a ton...yet. Perhaps in a year or two I will have a (literal) ton of garlic.

I've already got a lot of local interest for scapes and bulbs for next summer. What doesn't grow to planting size will be sold.

You guys haven't had the ground freeze yet? That surprises me with this cold snap. Are you outside of it? We had a low of 5 degrees last night!

My 1st year bulbils didn't amount to much this year. Late planting and in a bed that doesn't get full sun were probably the issue there. I'm letting them overwinter in that bed and I'll transplant what survives in the spring.

The top 1” is frozen.

I’ve been working on too many hobbies/projects.  I decided to keep my catfish outdoors this winter because they are simply too big and numerous to keep indoors at this point.  So I had to insulate the fish tanks and add a heater and I also add warm water as necessary.  I’ve actually been able to keep the water around 50F and I’m still feeding them.

I planted my garlic on 11/26/2019.  I planted 45 Music, 45 Chesnok Red, and 45 German White.  I would like to find a fourth variety to plant next year.

@BigPumpkins

I’m sure @Eagle_19er would have some recommendations.

I would recommend Siberian.  For my area, they seemed to do the best after Music.  IIRC, Eagle_19er is the one that gave me the Siberian I have now, though I somehow managed to only have it in the form of bulbils that I have in their own bed and will likely transplant in the spring to space them apart more.

I am trying two new varieties because they had them at the store:





I’m also planting Music and German.  The Music will be in the form of cloves as well as bulbils.  The bulbils were harvested about 2 months ago and I’ve kept them refrigerated.  I should have harvested them back in July but never got around to it until later.



The Music and Siberian bulbils are from the fall of 2016 harvest and then they were kept in the refrigerator from 2016/2017 winter and then planted for the first time in the spring of 2017.  Going back in this thread, I posted this on 05/02/2018:

So the Music “cloves” I got from bulbils planted in the spring of 2017 were re-planted now in the fall of 2019, which would make them 2 1/2 years old.  Some of them are large like this one:



Or a little smaller like these:





Some of them instead of being “clove” size with a single bulb, actually are clove size with several cloves in them.  I broke these apart and planted them separately.





I use a stick to make a 2” deep hole and then put the clove down and use the stick to measure out 6” between cloves and 10” between rows.  Normally I would do 12” between rows and 6” between cloves, but I was worried about space.  The distances were shortened even further to 4” between cloves that came from bulbils and 8” between rows.  Those bulbil-sourced cloves are Music since I didn’t harvest the Siberian.

















This is a comparison of a bulb-derived clove at the bottom and then the two top ones are from 2 1/2 year old bulbils:



That last picture above says it all:  The bulbil-derived “cloves” for planting took 2 1/2 years from the time of planting or 3 years from the time they were harvested to produce “cloves” for planting that are approaching the size of cloves obtained from this year’s bulbs.  So it’s much faster to plant cloves from bulbs than to use bulbils.

However, bulbils don’t have soil disease and you can harvest dozens of them from each garlic flower so they are very economical!

@C-4 's recommendation of Siberian is a good choice, usually a solid grower. If you want to try a hotter garlic that the other options you have you could always get your hands on some Georgian Fire or Metechi.

Attached File
Attached File


Dug up a row of the garlic that has been growing for at least the last 5 years as a perennial.

Still not sure what it is. Large single clove. Replanted the biggest 50 or so. See what happens.

@NwG

Where did you get them?  Is it a wild garlic?

Would you be willing to trade some next season?  Does your ground freeze or are you too far south?

It’s not really wild, planted some time in the past by a previous owner. (Grows in rows)

Our ground doesn’t freeze and I’d be glad to send you some whenever. There are still a few existing rows with hundreds of bulbs.

It may be elephant garlic or could be some weird solo garlic.... it’s a mystery!

Attached File


I planted 36 cloves this year.  It's been in the ground about a month.

I will look into the Siberian.  Thanks.

@NwG

Does it form cloves, or just a single, large bulb?  How does it reproduce?

We’ll IM for info and see if there’s something you’d like to trade for.

@samiam513

Is the tubing irrigation?

Are you planning on putting in more soil or is there a reason to leave it low like that.

@c-4 The tubing is actually a copper pipe trellis.  I grew pole bean plants in the bed last spring and I left the trellises in place.

I am adding more soil in the spring/summer.    This was the initial fill amount.  I'll probably put a yard of mushroom compost in each bed.  They could use more organic matter for sure.

Yeah, I thought it looked weird for irrigation.

Attached File
Attached File
Attached File


Some of my smelly babies.. garlic, onions and shallots.

Sorry northerners.

The ones I’ve pulled have been single large bulbs. Not sure if it’s a solo garlic or just the aftermath of not pulling the bulbs they planted and them regrowing year after year.

They do throw up scapes, so they could reproduce that way but they seem to grow kind of like shallots.

When the time comes, you are welcome to some!

@NwG

Thank you!  Do you have Egyptian/Walking onions?  If not, I can trade those for that garlic.  It will have to wait until spring though.

Yeah, the ground is frozen here and has a good 8" of snow.

I do have an assortment of garlic cloves left from planting and was thinking of putting some in a long pot that someone gave me, keeping it in the garage over the winter and seeing how it does in the spring, in addition to the ones I have in the garden.

Also, I want to try producing garlic seeds.  Apparently, if you let the garlic plant flower and remove all the bulbils, the remaining flowers in between the bulbils will produce seeds.  There is one place I found that has seeds, but I would rather try producing my own.

Definitely interested in trying that eventually. I've read the same but never remember to give it a shot when I have plants in the ground

We should definitely try it this year, though it may be with only a half-dozen flowers since it sounds time-consuming!

If I have time I'll definitely give it a go. Remind me around scape time if you don't forget (like me)!

Update:  03/08/2020

My main garlic patch is covered in snow.



I was never able to move my Siberian garlic I had originally started with bulbils, and they are in an upper/raised garden exposed to sun next to the house.  So they are already coming up!





Lifting up the snow:

Very nice.  Spring is almost here ;-)

Nothing close to coming up around here. Still under 6-8" of snow, althought last week that was 18-20" of snow.

Getting closer

Update:  03/14/2020

Mid-winter, I had sprinkled some soil on the snow of my main garlic patch.  The dark color caused the snow above it to melt from the sun.  Still some snow underneath some of it and ground is still mostly frozen.  Some of the little signs are now visible.

First garlic up as of 3/26 and earlier than I thought, but we've been mild and relatively warm and dry this winter.

Varieties that are first up are: Siberian, Romanian Red and Majestic.

I've noticed some onesie twosies of other varieties coming up but those three have almost the complete bed poking through straw.

Just about time to fertilize. With everything going on in the world I forgot to acquire Bloodmeal. Luckily it's in stock on Amazon and a 50LB bag will be here next week!

I'll try to get some pics up but it's gonna be rainy here all weekend.

Bump. Keep this thread alive.

Getting close to harvest here. Seen eating scapes for the last few weeks.

Attached File


Question... I had one verity (not sure what) that “resprouted” and sent up a bunch of new stems from the clove. I pulled them. Small bulbs that sprouted..

What to do with them? Thinking of roasting or infusing  olive oil?

@NwG

Those look like the flowers ie. scapes.  I usually pan-fry them in butter.  ETA:  OK, you’re already eating scapes.  It still looks like flowers.  I know softneck garlic sends flowers out closer to the bulb.

The bulbs I pulled had each clove sprouted like if you planted a whole bulb.

We roasted them, they were delicious!! Best part was the paper wasn’t dry so the whole bulb was edible.

I smell of garlic and sulphur farts and that’s ok!

@NwG
@Eagle_19er

Interesting.  Is this the mystery variety you wrote about previously that formed the multiple bulbs?  Can we trade some of that mystery garlic?

These are pictures from today.  Believe it or not, we got 1/4” of fresh snow overnight that melted over the course of the day.

This is the main patch.  I have some Music that I planted from store-bought cloves are the top, but there are several rows at the bottom of the picture that are from my own bulbils!  I will do more pictures and name the varieties.



Close-up of average size.



This is the Siberian garlic from bulbils that I didn’t have time to transplant in the fall.  Maybe I should transplant it now?  The bulbs would like get larger but I don’t have a lot of garden space for my other plants.  I may just leave them here.  Those are red tulips to the left and the rows of small seedlings are Cherry Belle and French Breakfast radishes I need to thin out tomorrow.

Looking great!

They were not the mystery garlic, those are still growing normally and are a foot or so tall and throwing scapes.

These were some Portuguese verity I think, will have to look and see what I ordered. They all started doing it and I pulled the rest today. Only planted a pound of them.

Attached File



All the other garlic verities are going normally, I’ll send you some of whatever you like.

Mystery garlic bed on the right, Transylvanian bed on left
Attached File


Gray shallots in front and Silverskin garlic behind
Attached File


More shallots and onions.
Attached File

Attached File


Update on mystery garlics. They are some kind of hard neck, odd as they usually are not grown in the south.  Most heads are palm size and after roasting a few today, delicious on bread with a touch of salt!

Will keep them around!

Eta- they spread from little marble size bulbs on the roots.

@NwG

Can you save me some of the little bulbs?  If hard neck, they should grow well here!

I have some Egyptian Walking Onions I can trade, though it will have to wait until summer for the little bulbs to propagate them.

How's everyone's garlic going? I finally got the mulch bug this year and all of my gardens, including the garlic, look the best ever.

Other than the deer eating almost all of my soybean plants last night, things are going great.

deer <-

Here's my modest patch, I'm getting close to harvesting, it went in the ground last September, so I'm hoping it's gtg.  First time planting and I'm not sure when it's time to unearth.
Any advice will be welcome.

@50-140

Those plants still look nice and green. You typically harvest when the leaves start turning brown. There are some good websites that have pics of ready-to-harvest garlic if you search for "when to harvest garlic".

I just pulled all of mine today as the leaves were really browning up.

+1

@50-140

You want to wait until about 1/2 of the bottom leaves are yellow/brown.  You still want the top leaves to be green.  Why?  Because those leaves continue all the way down to the bulb and form the "paper wrapping" around the bulb to keep the cloves together.  So you are waiting until the last minute when all growth of the bulb is done, but not so long that the outer wrapping of the bulb starts to degenerate.  If you don't harvest, the outer wrapper falls apart and it makes it very difficult to harvest as the cloves fall away as you try to pull it out of the ground.

Yours look just slightly early to harvest so you're right to wait just a little longer.  But you're almost there!

I will get pics up of mine soon!

Thank you, I'll wait a bit.

If anyone has a few extra heads of hardneck (preferably Music) they could spare I would be willing to pay a bit and reimburse shipping or trade garden seeds.

I grew garlic for years (Music, Chesnok Red, & Siberian) then a move coupled right after a deployment to the sandbox resulted in me losing my garlic and I've been in search of more since. The online "seed garlic" places charge like it's made of gold...

I've harvested and cured my garlic. Now I'm cutting stalks and roots. Here are the best bulbs I've gotten so far from German Red and Music:

German Red (a rocambole variety) is prone to double bulbs. I didn't have many doubles this year but here's a picture with something I've never seen, a triple bulb! Also showing a large double bulb and a massive (definitely the biggest I harvested) 2.75" bulb.

Attached File


Here are a few of my jumbo Music bulbs. One is about 2.75" and the others are around 2.5" each. I have several more in the 2.5" range and a bunch in the 2"-2.5" range.

Attached File


More pics as I get through more of it!

@SigOwner_P229 I have some Music. It's not the largest of the large as I'm reserving that for my replanting, but they are still a plantable size....I'm sure I have at least a handful in the 1.75" range.  Best bet is to plant the largest 2 cloves and eat the other 2 on "marginal" sized planting stock, or plant them all and maybe get a nice surprise!

Let me know if you want some. I'm sure it can be arranged.

That's insane.  Mine are small this year, likely because they were rotated to the "lower" garden.  I have an upper one that is next to the house and behind the concrete block wall that gets more sun.  

I did not have a chance to try the seed garlic this year.  Too many projects!

I forgot about the true seed thing until after I harvested oh well, There's always next year.

BTW, I did let bulbils form on a select number of plants this year. On one Chesnok Red plant, I got a double bulbil. Never seen that either! I'll snap a pic of it and post it up.

Oops I lied, it's a Georgian Crystal plant that had the double bulbil.

Attached File

I just picked, or rather unearthed my garlic today, I'm laying it out on a screen and headed to the crawlspace to cure.  
I ordered Chesnok Red, Music, and Georgia Crystal from Hood river Garlic in Oregon coming in a few months from now.
I'm not too disappointed for a first time of planting.

Good looking garlic!

Those look GREAT! Wish I had a whole garden of those those year.

Finally tagscribing.

Is it too late in mid US latitudes to plant? My main concern is that the time in ground is so crazy long (compared to some other root veggies I might plant in fall and harvest in spring) that they will occupy valuable bed space that I can’t place my spring plants in.

Anyway, if not too late, where should I order bulbs from?