Garlic 2019
 

Been busy but I wanted to get some pics on here.

Planted starting last fall around Halloween and finished up in the middle of November.

Have about 16,000 plants. Chesnock, Music, German extra hardy, Romanian Red, and small trials (maybe 100 plants each) of Turbans Tzan and Thai Fire.

2 plantings went into two 14'x100' caterpillar tunnels with the hope they would be earlier from being under cover. I put 4 beds (3 rows of plants in each bed) in each tunnel. I dropped the sides in late January to get things warming up. The plants are huge compared to the same varieties out in the field. Not sure if they will just big larger bulbs or if I will get earliness compared to the ones outside.
The little bit of green you see in the walkways is brown mustard that I planted in February. My hope is to not only get some cover to prevent weeds in the walkways, but get some wireworm repelling after I mow it down in a before bulbs start sizing up. The mustard I picked has high bio-fumigant compounds. We'll see.
Not pictured are two more plots that were planted last. They total 8 beds 100' long, so 2,400 row feet. They look great, though a tad shorter than the earlier planted stuff. There was less plant above ground over the winter, so less cold damage. Thinking about planting everything a week later this fall.

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Garlic in tunnel from 3-26:

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Wow! Your garlic looks amazing!

PH wow, they look splendid!!!! :D
Curiously, a greenhouse start for bulbils did not translate into earlier nor bigger rounds last year, although they were up months earlier. :surprised: They seem to need daylength factors to start bulbing (?) which doesn't happen here until late July/August. But at least in theory, a bigger plant should produce a bigger bulb. I'll be really interested in seeing your results at the lower latitude and warmer climate / earlier normal harvest date. 8-)

These are absolutely gorgeous, happy plants! Nice work!

Oh boy! You are WAY out of my league! Amazing!

Thanks everyone. You are all too kind.
Lots of trial and error, not just growing garlic, has finally led to something substantial.
All I ever wanted to do was produce something on a large enough scale to pay a mortgage for the year. I’m closer than ever.
Your words are very encouraging and it helps keep me going when the aches, pains, and hours feel like they are piling up without a win.
I’ll be back at some point as we get into May with an update.

[QUOTE=PureHarvest;731946]Thanks everyone. You are all too kind.
Lots of trial and error, not just growing garlic, has finally led to something substantial.
All I ever wanted to do was produce something on a large enough scale to pay a mortgage for the year. I’m closer than ever.
Your words are very encouraging and it helps keep me going when the aches, pains, and hours feel like they are piling up without a win.
I’ll be back at some point as we get into May with an update.[/QUOTE]

I was wondering how much help you have... 800 heads is about all can handle by myself. I have a lot of 2nd year bulbils this year, with those it's looking like 3 years before I get a decent sized bulb.

BTW, I'm betting you have already succeeded on your goals!

Planting is me and occasionally my 3 kids, all under 12.
Harvest last year was me, wife and my mom and dad. My kids chipped in a couple hours too. We use a farm all super a to lift the bulbs, so that is a major key.
Everything else is me.

Wow, so many beautiful garlic. Do you sell them to stores or a farmer's market? I love harvesting garlic, but all I can handle is a couple hundred bulbs.

All the best for a wonderful harvest of garlic and everything else. You have done a beautiful job.

I sell to produce stands.
Last year I sold to 2 locations. One has 2 stores and a CSA that sends out a few hundred boxes each week with 10 drop off locations.
This year I'm picking up a 3rd produce stand that moves 30 pounds a week.
I'm also seriously looking at selling online in 2020, considering the prices that are garnered in that space. A lot goes into that, and I have been doing my homework on what it will take.
A vendor I bought from two years ago sells 90% of her bulbs online and sells out every year by labor day. She said she paid 5k to get her site built with search optimization and it worked. Said she was sceptical doing it and begrudgingly forked the money over, but was glad she did. She says she was able to double her production two years in a row and still sold out by Labor Day.
I would be able to at least double the price I am selling at now if I ever move online.
I am also looking to get certified organic this spring, so I might even be able to more than double my revenue from the same production.

Here is my brown mustard taking off between the rows on 4/20:

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Here it is 10 days later on 4/30:

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And here it is on May 9. I cut it all down with a plastic blade attachment on my weed eater. Ideally the debris should be worked into the soil to get the benefit of the bio--fumigation compounds into the soil to repel wire worms. I am not going to do this because I don't want to make a mess of the walkways and expose soil and let weeds germinate and fill the rows.

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Not sure if you can get most French Varieties where you are or if they work well where you are but Thermidrome are tough and hardy.

I grew them all Winter in UK and freezing temps, frost, gale force wind and rain did nothing much. They just kept going and did not care

Scapes sharted showing around 5/1.
Today, 5/17, Scapes are everywhere, with some already making the first curl.
I will be pulling all scapes tomorrow.
Last two years harvest started around mid-June.
I suspect we will be at least a week early this year.
The Turbans I planted, as expected, scaped and started bulbing before all my other varieties. They might be ready to harvest in a couple weeks.

Here is a plant (Music) that I pulled this morning, bulbs are sizing up now. This one is about golfball sized:

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What a beautiful sight! 8-) I love what you're doing with the mustard. Is there any risk they will set seed after being cut down in flower?

I still think you should get some bio-fumigant benefits if you tarp over or till the mustard beds after garlic harvest. Will be interested to see how long it takes for them to produce more flowers after the cutting.


Your turbans should be ready well before the others, according to what I've read about them.

[COLOR=#333333]"The time to check their bulb size and get ready to start harvesting them is in mid-spring before their leaves fall over and they lose all their bulb wrappers, as they will if they stay in the ground for very long after they are ready to be harvested."..."[/COLOR][COLOR=#333333]The secret to success in growing great Asiatic and Turban is to dig down and watch the bulbs develop and when they get big enough to suit you, go ahead and dig them up, don't wait for them to fall over."[/COLOR]
[COLOR=#333333]https://www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com/turban.html[/COLOR]
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[COLOR=#333333]Chesnok Red is at least a week later than Music, for me. Don't know how your warmer climate might play into that, but Henry told me that Chesnok and Persian Star put on most of their size in the last week before harvest. I would leave them two weeks from Music if I could, but we're already turning wet and cool by that time, and I can't take the anxiety, so I dig too early and never grow them as big as they could be. :oops: Did your Chesnok scapes come later as well? Mine are always a week behind, at least.
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Yeah, the Chesnock are behind in Scape growth. I anticipate harvesting them later and last.
I saw that info on GGG too, and have been using that as my guide.
I don't think the flowers will survive being cut from the plant. There is some basal leaves still on the plants and stubble, but I don't know what will come of that. There are plants that came up in the area around the some of the garlic plants where there is no fabric. I left them. The root system is shallow and I don't see it as a problem at this point in season as far as stealing resources from the garlic. They are flowering now. I am not worried about seeds becoming a weed issue down the road, because I will plant the whole plot back to tall fescue this fall. The surrounding areas are all thick tall fescue and clover, so there is little to no space for seed to take hold.

[QUOTE=xellos99;735610]Not sure if you can get most French Varieties where you are or if they work well where you are but Thermidrome are tough and hardy.

I grew them all Winter in UK and freezing temps, frost, gale force wind and rain did nothing much. They just kept going and did not care[/QUOTE]

Weather is not a problem here for me.
The only problems I have are with wireworms causing some blemishes on the bulbs, and humidity during the curing and storage process.

Lovely looking garlic PH. Trialling Music here Down Under (where it is regarded buy those who know more than I as a Porcelain) for the first time, Cherokee Red on the list for next year, interested in hearing your thoughts on both.

Not familiar with Cherokee red.
Music does fine here, but German extra hardy sizes up bigger and has been more uniform in the two years I’ve grown it.
I don’t have lots of years to compare and suspect that over time they will both be good.
I am out here now and must note that chesnock Red is not making scapes yet where the porcelains are all at first curl. I’m 3/4 of the way done pulling them all, scapes that is.

Looking like Friday the 14th will be the main harvest day.
Probably will harvest the stuff that was planted in tunnel this weekend, as it looks like it is about a week ahead of the plants in the open field.

I built a harvest wagon to be pulled over the beds after we undercut the bulbs with the tractor.

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Now we won't have to stoop over to pick up the bulbs and drag the basket along by hand.
2 people can ride and will sit on it sideways on a padded stadium bleacher seat.

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2 bushel baskets will fit in the space between the square holes. Full baskets will be shuttled to two easy-up canopies with a golf cart pulling a garden wagon that can hold 4 baskets.
The tent stations will have two drying racks up on saw horses for loading.
Putting new cultivator shares on the tractor this weekend and gonna line up the shanks and test them out for undercutting bulbs.
Then we rest up for the big day...

Nice wagon PH! I bet the kids are gonna love helping while having a ride. :D8-)

Already had my youngest declare "I'm doing this job!"

LOL. :)) What a clever dad!

I love it! Not only does it make harvesting easier but if the kids think it's fun they'll be even better helpers. You get the Tom Sawyer Award. :lol:

Harvest was this past weekend.
We started with the 10 beds that were out in the field on Friday.
I cut down all the tops at 730 am (took 50 minutes with a weed whacker with a 3 serrated plastic blade cutting head) and walked in the house at 830 pm.
Everything went well. We were able to pull a wrapper layer off the bulbs in the field on about the first half of the harvest, so there will be nothing to clean on those. Will buy me a lot of time to get to selling while I clean the rest when they are dry enough.
Music and Romanian Red sized up nicely, but German Extra Hardy was disappointingly small. Maybe could have use 5-7 more days, but we had a small window between constant rain and boy has this spring been wet. Had to take them regardless.
Harvested the tunnel-grown Chesnock on Saturday. Mixed sizes. The cloves are all over the place in size when you break them open to plant, so I imagine the small bulbs i harvested came from the smaller cloves we planted.
Will not plant Chesnock again due to its lateness and variability in clove size.
Still have 2- 300' beds of Chesnock out in the field to harvest this coming weekend.
I had another two areas I planted late and built tunnels over (but never got the plastic on in February) looked like crap. Tiny plants. I figured they were a loss. Tops were almost 80% brown as of yesterday. I pulled the ones that were pinky-sized stems and was stunned. Decent bulbs 1.75"-2".
So I gleaned through and probably got 1,500 bulbs on what I thought was a loss.
Lesson: even a few more days in the ground can really size your bulbs on small stems/plants. Plants can look way past time, and you still will have some viable bulb wrappers if they will go to immediate sale or use. Probably not as good for winter storage or seed saving.
Anyway, an over all success. I estimate we have 10,000 bulbs in the drying trailer...

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What a wonderful site!

Got any closeups of the plants before harvest?

That is beautiful, PH!!! :D Great job with the weed whacker - smart way to do it for the bulk drying too. What great drying racks!! Super setup. 8-)
I was wondering and meaning to ask you about the garlic you grew under cover. The garlic I have in the greenhouse is so far ahead of everything outdoors, the rounds are putting out scapes today, so I will definitely have a much earlier harvest time than the outdoor.


Sorry the Chesnok didn't work out for you. Persian Star is the same type (Purple Stripe) and same mo - later, smaller plants, hard to get the bulbs to size up, many cloves but the smaller cloves are not worth planting, for sure they are giving you a smaller bulb. I thought you would get bigger bulbs for being in a warm climate though. Will be interested to hear about the later harvest, and I hope they pleasantly surprise you. :)