Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garlic grow?

brainchasm, how about pulling some now, and then a few in between now and the 21st, and the rest on the 21st. That way you'll know for evermore.

CC

GWN wrote:CC mine are doing that too,  I read somewhere that a little yellow on the leaf tips could be many things NONE of them harmful.

I am wondering if anyone knows when the garlics split into cloves, the ones I pulled were just like green onions, ... NO separate cloves

According to Ron Engeland from Filaree farms who wrote the book Growing Great Garlic, the cloves swell up the last month before harvest.

He also says the most consistent reliable large bulbs with large cloves come from bulbs in the 2 to 2-1/2 inch diameter range.  He does not replant cloves from larger bulbs.  Because----

 Cloves from huge mega bulbs ended up growing very inconsistently in size later on when harvested. 

But heck its your garden so have fun.  

Large honking bulbs supposedly do not store very well either.

llama momma wrote:

GWN wrote:CC mine are doing that too,  I read somewhere that a little yellow on the leaf tips could be many things NONE of them harmful.

I am wondering if anyone knows when the garlics split into cloves, the ones I pulled were just like green onions, ... NO separate cloves

According to Ron Engeland from Filaree farms who wrote the book Growing Great Garlic, the cloves swell up the last month before harvest.

He also says the most consistent reliable large bulbs with large cloves come from bulbs in the 2 to 2-1/2 inch diameter range.  He does not replant cloves from larger bulbs.  Because----

 Cloves from huge mega bulbs ended up growing very inconsistently in size later on when harvested. 

But heck its your garden so have fun.  

Large honking bulbs supposedly do not store very well either.

LM...I thought I was the only one who still said "honking"  LOL!! I am totally LOL!! I pulled more today, and almost all were 2-3" sized! I will keep those to plant too along with the "honking" one and see what happens! Now, I have to remember all this next fall?? LOL!  TY again!

SG
Honk-honk it's me again.  Lol. One time I heard a priest use the word honkin to describe something big and it seemed extra funny coming from him.  

Last year I had a mega bulb and shared pics on the forum too. Think it was close to 3 inches in diameter.  But now I can't remember if I ate it or planted it.  Doh!

llama momma wrote:SG
Honk-honk it's me again.  Lol. One time I heard a priest use the word honkin to describe something big and it seemed extra funny coming from him.  

Last year I had a mega bulb and shared pics on the forum too. Think it was close to 3 inches in diameter.  But now I can't remember if I ate it or planted it.  Doh!

       oh man, I'd love to see the pic of your monster!! any idea what thread?

SG  I found it!  And GWN has a picture of her monster garlic too

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t16196-german-red-garlic?highlight=garlic

llama momma wrote:SG  I found it!  And GWN has a picture of her monster garlic too

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/t16196-german-red-garlic?highlight=garlic

oh tysm for finding it! I searched until my eyeballs were crossed!!! LOL Boy, yours and GWN's are real beauties!! WOW. Interesting that both of yours were "Red" and mine was a Pink, I wonder if those redish colors make bigger bulbs?  Anyway, nice ones! phew!!

LM     Thanks for posting all of that.   Good to know that mine are GOING TO BE BIG someday.
Also great to see my pics from last year, funny how you forget.
BTW, I have been known to use an adjective like HONKING, when referring to an excessively large thing.

Interesting about the large cloves LM..... thanks

GWN wrote:LM     Thanks for posting all of that.   Good to know that mine are GOING TO BE BIG someday.
Also great to see my pics from last year, funny how you forget.
BTW, I have been known to use an adjective like HONKING, when referring to an excessively large thing.

Interesting about the large cloves LM..... thanks

alright! another official member of the "honking" club!  LOL~~

Such harvest!  Red Inchelium softnecks.  And now we wait...weeks of curing and hoping the cat doesn't decide they need to be buried or something.

As a cat servant, I had to laugh!  I hung my softnecks up by the middle of the greens to dry in the warm Fresno Air.  The hard necks were strong enough to lay across a few horizontal sticks.

I just wanted to show you all my small harvest.  I planted these in October and harvested them last Monday.  Some are the size of a pearl onion, but several are a decent size.  I got some really good tips from Bob on how to raise garlic in EarthBoxes.   I am definitely going to try again next season.



 
Sorry about the glare.  I harvested them when it was really sunny.

Windmere - what variety of garlic are those.  I planted in early spring (because I never got the stock to plant in Oct).  Mine were puny.

yolos wrote:Windmere - what variety of garlic are those.  I planted in early spring (because I never got the stock to plant in Oct).  Mine were puny.

Yolos - I planted Early Italian.  This was at the recommendation of Bob.  Despite some smaller than expected sizes, I liked it very much.  The flavor is good and the yield was decent.  I'm sure our extra cold winter was a huge factor in the sizes.  I plan on planting the same variety next season.  I may do something else for fun, but for sure I will plant Early Italian.

I read that garlic should be rotated... can't remember where... but I'm going to do that since I have some room to be flexible on planting locations.  An area I've devoted to basil will become a garlic bed just before the first frost.

Windmere wrote:

yolos wrote:Windmere - what variety of garlic are those.  I planted in early spring (because I never got the stock to plant in Oct).  Mine were puny.

Yolos - I planted Early Italian.  This was at the recommendation of Bob.  Despite some smaller than expected sizes, I liked it very much.  The flavor is good and the yield was decent.  I'm sure our extra cold winter was a huge factor in the sizes.  I plan on planting the same variety next season.  I may do something else for fun, but for sure I will plant Early Italian.

I read that garlic should be rotated... can't remember where... but I'm going to do that since I have some room to be flexible on planting locations.  An area I've devoted to basil will become a garlic bed just before the first frost.

Do you know why it should be rotated?  Is it to avoid pests/disease or some other reason?  Thanks.

Garlic can be prone to a soil born fungus called white rot. It can reside in beds for years. Rotation can reduce the chance of this becoming established. Garlic subjected to wide variations in watering (or consistent over-watering) are susceptible to most diseases, but this particular soil-born fungus is nasty. I live 40 miles south of Gilroy California, the "garlic capitol of the world" and they don't even grow garlic in their area because of white rot's habit of staying dormant in soil for years.

yardslave wrote:I live 40 miles south of Gilroy California, the "garlic capitol of the world" and they don't even grow garlic in their area because of white rot's habit of staying dormant in soil for years.

So YS.... are you saying that they have stopped growing garlic in gilroy, because of white rot?

Too true. It's trucked in from as far away as Canada and is processed and distributed from plants located in Gilroy. (Rumor has it they are even taking in garlic from China).

WOW that IS a big deal.
There are some garlic growers here, small production. I was telling her about how I went to a garlic festival last year and bought several types of garlic
and she told me she would not dare do that, because in the past they got infected with something and it destroyed their whole crop, 
So they are VERY paranoid.
SO  .. if the production is so massive in Gilroy, how long will they wait before trying to grow it again..

I don't think they have any plans to try to farm garlic much longer. The state outlawed most soil fumigants that can be used on the effected land, and as the population in the area continues to chew away at available acres, I'd doubt they want to stir up a hornets nest with the encroaching urban sprawl by nuking "their" backyards with bromides and such.

Yardslave wrote:Garlic can be prone to a soil born fungus called white rot. It can reside in beds for years. Rotation can reduce the chance of this becoming established. Garlic subjected to wide variations in watering (or consistent over-watering) are susceptible to most diseases, but this particular soil-born fungus is nasty. I live 40 miles south of Gilroy California, the "garlic capitol of the world" and they don't even grow garlic in their area because of white rot's habit of staying dormant in soil for years.

 I am also surprised at hearing this as my husband and I passed through there in the 1980s and stopped at a family restaurant where all the locals ate. They had a fixed menue for every day of the week, and you either ate it or went without. We had a lovely,  substantial an inexpensive meal  but drew the line at garlic ice cream.
A long time ago and nothing stays the same. I suppose that is the result of monoculture, eventually you run into trouble.

kelejan wrote:A long time ago and nothing stays the same. I suppose that is the result of monoculture, eventually you run into trouble.

Yes I guess that is true... too much of a good thing.  We traveled through in the 90s, and I remember the smell of garlic and the largest outlet mall I had ever seen.  We were on our way to disneyland with our kids.

I am curious, since this discussion was around crop rotation, whether that was felt to be the cause of this....... OR Lack of crop rotation?

Hey GWN....  I guess I started this by mentioning that I had heard that garlic crop rotation can be a good idea to help against disease.  I could not remember where I read that when I first mentioned it and cpl100 asked where I read that.  Well... I've actually been meaning to respond to this question for a while now, but I have not had time to devote to it.  I saw Yardslave's post just a few minutes ago.

I still don't remember where I read about it... but I did remember about pathogens being able to reside in soil for a very long time.   There are several schools of thought regarding garlic crop rotation (some strongly encourage it and some strongly say that it is unnecessary), but I think I'm just going to do it to be on the safe side.  Thanks to Yardslave for articulating things way better than I ever could.

I had no idea about Gilroy garlic production.  Well over a decade ago, I remember driving through Gilroy and getting that strong scent of garlic (even through the AC!).

As for garlic ice cream?  It's actually pretty good (to me anyway).  There is a restaurant in Los Angeles called "The Stinking Rose."  Everything they serve has copious amounts of garlic.   It's heaven if you love garlic.  We ate there when my wife was pregnant.  She ate a bruschetta with an extra strong dose of garlic.  Our daughter kicked her so hard that she was afraid our daughter had broken her water.  Fortunately no water was broken.

And out daughter LOVES garlic.

Yardslave wrote:Too true. It's trucked in from as far away as Canada and is processed and distributed from plants located in Gilroy. (Rumor has it they are even taking in garlic from China).

I had no idea! We drove through last year and could smell it. I imagine the odor in the soil will take a while to dissipate, plus if they are still processing, the odor will still be prevalent.

The odor/ aroma of garlic that permeates the air comes from a Schillings plant that didn't relocate when farms stopped planting. The smell comes from the dehydrators used in the production of dried garlic chips, powder. and garlic salt. Christopher Ranch, another Gilroy Plant also puts up jars of crushed garlic and peeled garlic cloves.