Great pics and info everyone.
Now that a few weeks have passed, I must mention some updates:
As a whole, the chesnock ended up sizing up the best across the board. It is so wonderfully purple that I am going to plant a lot of it this year. People shop with their eyes and purple bulbs next to white ones (German xtra hardy) is no contest. Plus they seemed to clean much easier.
The bulbs we field stripped that were clean going into trailer developed mold after about 3 weeks. And others that I cleaned dirt off of started molding too. Anything that still had a dry dirt film had none, even through today.
Lesson: in my climate, clean bulbs after a couple weeks need to go immediately into my walk-in cooler.
Dropping German Extra hardy. No color on bulb and seems redundant when I’m already growing two other porcelains.
Lastly, a significant percentage of my overall harvest is just too small. 1 and 5/8” is my low end for what I call a medium bulb that I sell to produce stands. At least a couple thousand are below this.
Next year I will wait to see more brown leaves regardless of weather or forecast.
My dad planted some cloves I gave him and waited on purpose to let all the leaves go yellow/brown. Still had plenty of clove wrappers and no cloves busting open. I think the leaves really have to be dead brown for that wrapper to be shot.
I won’t push it that far, but will go at least one leaf farther than I did last year.
We have sold aver 2,000 bulbs so far and all my prime bulbs are in the cooler for this fall’s seed.
I have retail boxes in 6 locations and a csa that ships 700 boxes took 700 a couple weeks ago.
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