Garlic harvest 2015

[svalli]

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

[Durgan]

Looks like a reasonable harvest. For seed you might try growing bulbils successively each year and developing your own. This would be a viable option, since you are putting some effort into growing garlic.

For seed I use part of last year's crop. I don't pay much attention to variety or touted names, since I only look for large, healthy bulbs. I grow around 100 bulbs and find I have difficulty using it all each year. It grows so well that I always put in about a 10 by 10 foot bed and cover with wood chips for mulch. It always survives the Winter and comes through the deep mulch with no difficulty. I only grow hardneck.

Garlic is such an easy plant to grow, it surprises me that every gardener does not plant it,even some in the flower beds. It requires little room and almost no care.

[AdrianaG]

Nice! I tried my hand at shallots this year, started last fall and the results left a lot to be desired. The bulbs were a little bigger than marbles. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Durgan, what variety of garlic do you grow, and how do you store it?

[PhilaGardener]

Fabulous looking crop! I've had great luck with garlic (but am still working on shallots!), although it took a few years to get things going. I found a locally-adapted Lancaster County heirloom strain that is my top producer; replanting the best cloves, it just seems to get better each year.

I find that folks love to receive a head of garlic as a gift!

[Durgan]

Originally Posted by AdrianaG

Nice! I tried my hand at shallots this year, started last fall and the results left a lot to be desired. The bulbs were a little bigger than marbles. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Durgan, what variety of garlic do you grow, and how do you store it?

I bought some white porcelain garlic hard neck about ten years ago and this is my continuing seed material. Names of garlic don't matter much. I attended a large garlic festival in Stratford and found for all practical purposes all garlic is similar. The only real division that is visible is some has purple streaks and some is pure white, my choice, and the difference between soft and hard neck is probably size, hard neck being slightly larger. I only grow hard neck. Hard neck has scapes whereas soft neck usually does not.

I store my garlic in a milk carton in a dark cold room, and the bulbs keep for about 6 months.

I use bulbils now, but they take three years to develop into full size bulbs. These are available from the scapes of hard neck. I have some maturing in the garden now. Also my main harvest is now drying hanging in the shed.

[barefootgardener]

What a wonderful crop and harvest of garlic. Great job!

This is my first successful year planting, growng and harvesting garlic. It was easier than I thought, but I think I planted my Killarney Red a bit too deep, it took longer to come up and the leaves and stalks did not grow as large.

To me there is a difference in flavors and heat in the garlic varieties I planted. I tasted the various cloves before planting. I ordered a few more different varieties that are being shipped in the fall. Music is one.

Ginny

[Father'sDaughter]

Great looking garlic!

Garlic is what started me down this garden path...

I grow a hardneck called German White originally purchased from a NY farmer at a garlic festival. It's been a consistently successful variety for me. I had also purchased Music at the same time which grew well the first two years then did poorly the next two.

Last year I purchased new seed stock for Music, as well as Siberian and Metecchi and planted forty of each variety including my German White.

In the end I harvested zero Metecchi (not a single clove sprouted), five Music (may give up on this one), 25 Siberian (will try again), and all 40 of the German White.

They were all planted in the same bed in blocks by variety, and the GW was in between the Music and Metecchi, so I know it wasn't a soil or weather issue. The cloves didn't rot, they just sat in the soil and did nothing. Since I purchased and planted in the fall and didn't discover the problem until spring, the vendor was no help. They only guaranteed that the cloves would arrive "in good condition."

Going forward, I'm thinking I'll stick with my tried and true GW. If Siberian settles in and continues to do well, it can stay. I'm hesitant about purchasing any new stock at this point.

[ddsack]

Svalli, those are beautiful! I am envious of anyone who can grow good garlic. I only tried one year and the results were small and unimpressive. Not sure if I planted them too late, but I know the soil in that bed was not the greatest either. I need to plan ahead better and try some other varieties. It's fun to have the choice of so many types and lovely colors.

[pauldavid]

Nice harvest Svalli! Looks good.

[garlic-luv]

Originally Posted by ddsack

Svalli, those are beautiful! I am envious of anyone who can grow good garlic. I only tried one year and the results were small and unimpressive. Not sure if I planted them too late, but I know the soil in that bed was not the greatest either. I need to plan ahead better and try some other varieties. It's fun to have the choice of so many types and lovely colors.

In your zone I would grow only hard neck varieties,amend the soil with compost and organic fertilizer and plant in mid to late September.also in full sun.

[ddsack]

Originally Posted by garlic-luv

In your zone I would grow only hard neck varieties,amend the soil with compost and organic fertilizer and plant in mid to late September.also in full sun.

I don't even know what variety it was. It was sold by one of the local private gardening/nurseries, so I assumed it was appropriate. But I take full responsibility for my poor results! My problem is I grow in raised beds, and don't really have any extra space to dedicate to garlic. I tried to plant it in a strip close to where I wanted to put some bush beans the next year, figuring I could pull it around the time the beans would grow over it. Kind of worked, but not that well.

[svalli]

It took us most of the day today cleaning the garlic for curing. Even it is not recommended, I like to remove some of the soiled outer wrappers before drying, because I found that it is easier to do while they are still soft. I make sure that there are enough layers left by counting the remaining leaves. I used the multipurpose ladder to hang the garlic on our covered deck.
Garlic drying.jpg

Last year I let couple of the scapes to grow and planted the tiny bulbils in the fall to big nursery pots buried in the ground. I used the pots so that I can easily harvest the small bulbs. Result was quite small bulbs, but compared to the bulbils these are actually large. I will plant them in ground this fall, but since this is so slow way of getting multi-clove bulbs, I will do this only as an experiment and plant main crop from the just harvested crop.
This is what I got from the bulbils this summer.
yksikyntiset.jpg

The hard-necks seemed to do better in our climate, so I may not plant so many of the soft-necks. Most of the soft-necks did partially bolt and produced bulbils in various parts of the stem and that seemed to make the main head smaller. I planted some of the same varieties in spring and those did also bolt, so the bolting should not be caused by the cold during winter; I wonder if it is our long days during midsummer, which makes the soft-necks to bolt.

Last winter I ordered Ted Jordan Meredith's book The Complete Book of Garlic and dreamed about this season's harvest while reading it. I do recommend the book for anyone, who wants to know more about garlic.

This was my second season as garlic grower, so this may have been just beginners luck or garlic is actually really easy to grow. It is a long time to wait them to grow from planting to harvest, but since these are planted in fall, there is one less thing to do during spring.

Sari

[salix]

Sari - I hope you have the same results I got after planting bulbils 2 years ago, and last year planting the resulting rounds of German Red garlic. I was astounded when I harvested them a week ago, the heads were almost as big as my regular crop! I will plant those in October and wait to see what will result next year.

I also did a mass planting of mixed bulbils last year. I harvested the rounds (look just like yours), but I know a lot were missed. I suspect there will be a lot of 'bonus' garlic next year, hopefully as large as the German Red this year. So easy, and apparently by growing in this manner one creates a variety that is well suited to local conditions.

[ddsack]

Sari, clever use of the multi use ladder! Where will you store it over the winter? That's a lot of garlic! I can see braids of garlic decorating all walls of your kitchen.

[svalli]

Most of the garlic is hard-necks and even the soft-necks grew scapes, so these are a bit difficult to braid. I did it last year by softening the central stem by twisting and then was able to get them braided. I hung the braids in kitchen and they stayed edible until we got new ones from this year's crop. Here is my harvest last year.
vampire repellent.jpg
Now when I look the photo of last year's harvest, I wonder what are we going to do with all of the new harvest. We eat a lot of garlic, but that is a lot for family of 3. Some of the new cloves will be planted and some given as gifts, so we do not have to eat all of it ourselves, still I think that we are going to stink this winter .