Garlic has now become my latest gardening obsession after hot peppers, tomatoes and potatoes. Earlier I have tried with planting supermarket garlic in the spring with bad results. Two years ago I was able to buy a bag full of porcelain garlic from a colleague. His father-in-law had grown this variety for many years, but did not know name for it. Only information is that it may have originated from Russia, like many hardy garlic varieties grown here.
Two years ago I planted the cloves in fall to an edge of our field next to birch trees. Luckily I had kept half of the garlic in storage and put it in end of December to refrigerator for cold treatment. I planted these in pots in March and kept in greenhouse until the field had thawed and I was able to plant them in ground. These were planted in the middle of the field in a sunny spot. The ones planted next to the birch trees were small but the ones from the middle of the field were large and beautiful.
The successes of first year got me so thrilled that last fall I got a lot more varieties and planted about 500 cloves in the fall and 100 more in the spring. This is how it looked in the fall 2014. I plant all garlic and onions using black plastic as mulch.
valkosipulipenkki.jpg
It is hard to find hardy garlic for planting here and most of the varieties sold by garden centers are French soft-necks. To my surprise all the varieties survived the cold winter with only few cloves failing to sprout.
garlic 24052015.jpg
This summer has been really wet and cooler than normal, but garlic seemed still grow decently.
garlic 05072015.jpg
Yesterday was finally time to harvest most of the garlic, I left one artichoke variety in ground, because it had still mostly green leaves.
Yesterday's harvest:
Garlic harvest 2015.jpg
Varieties:
French soft-neck Germidour (Week ago I pulled all of Germidours and few Sabadrome and Ornak to test. Germidours are on the left side.)
Germidour valkosipulit.jpg
French soft-neck Sabadrome
Garlic harvest Sabadrome.jpg
French soft-neck Messidor
Garlic harvest Messidor.jpg
Russian hard-neck
Garlic harvest russian.jpg
Polish hard-neck Ornak and Spanish hard-neck Morado
Garlic harvest Ornak and Morado.jpg
Sari