Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garlic grow?

Plantoid,

Hope this helps:

http://www.hoodrivergarlic.com/recipes.htm

That must have been some great vacation at that price. Congratulations!

All this garlic talk has gotten me wondering. What is happening to it during the last couple weeks in the ground? Is it getting larger? Is it getting the paper wrappers? Just sitting there waiting...? Does anyone know?

cpl100 wrote:

camprn wrote:cpl, sometimes they just stay small. Those are the ones you want to cook with any time now. Any larger bulbs or cloves you harvest can be used for next season planting. You can use the garlic as soon as you pull it out of the ground. Curing of unblemished bulbs  is recommended for any garlic bound for storage.

My garlic harvest has also begun with the few small scrawny plants.

I see that the garlic you pulled has leaves that are still quite green.  I thought they were supposed to brown first?  Most of mine have more brown than what you have pulled.  Also, does the diameter of the stalk directly correlate with the size of the bulb below in most cases?  Thanks!

Yes, the foliage appears to be green in this photo, but actually they were all yellowing and had fallen over because the stalk was done and drying out.

Thanks! Another thing for me to check for 'doneness' (if the stalks are drying out).

camprn,

I am not sure how many per square I planted since my two boxes that I used for garlic are long and about 1 1/2" wide.
My Chinese Pink Garlic did better than my Late Italian but I also planted more Chinese Pink.... We basically had rain all of May and June this spring.
But I am going to plant garlic again this fall. I also feel I need to nurture them a little more....

I promised so many people garlic that I spent late last night til 2pm doing final cleaning and braiding of the garlic ....lol ....since we are leaving tom or Fri. to go visit my grandsons and vacation time..

Now I am reading that you should not plant your garlic in the same spot for two years. Is that what you all follow? I planted six squares and I only have one 4 x 4 box! Are there also things that cannot be planted right after garlic? I vaguely recall reading that but can't call up the entire information. **sigh** It stinks when your brain no longer works like it did in your younger days!  

I have never heard that about not planting garlic in the same spot. Do you have a link to this?

camprn, sorry I do not have a link.  I read it but can't recall where I read it.  I do recall that it stated not to plant garlic in the same place in consecutive years and preferably leave two years in between.  I have read conflicting information about planting peas and beans after or near garlic as well.  I guess I will see just how valid the 'near' part is.  I have only the 16 squares and did plant green (bush) beans in the box last week.  So far most of them have sprouted and we shall see if they produce.  Have not been able to tend to the garden much, even to plant, due to health issues for my MIL taking up a lot of time.  

You are a much more knowledgeable gardener than I, and if you plant it in the same place yearly, I will not be afraid to do it!

Edit:  I just googled and came up with this but it is not the document I originally read:  

Garlic

and another:

More Garlic Info

If you buy your seed garlic from certified disease free seed growers or you save disease free seed there is no reason to rotate your crop out of the same bed.

cpl100 wrote:That must have been some great vacation at that price.  Congratulations!

All this garlic talk has gotten me wondering.  What is happening to it during the last couple weeks in the ground?  Is it getting larger?  Is it getting the paper wrappers?  Just sitting there waiting...?   Does anyone know?

 Twas a cheapie weekend really , we have planned for three years what we'd do with part of  an inheritance bequest when it came through .
 We went and  purchased a new to us 5 berth caravan in tip top condition ( 5 yrs. old ). Then went  and brought two new compact foldup bicycles plus a few more bits & bobs to ensure we are fully kitted out for the forth coming 6 weeks of School summer holidays when we will be AFKB's for almost six weeks .

I've harvested  two square feet of garlic and it's laid out on an opened up thick cardboard box under the veranda to ripen off/ dry out fully .
 On the remaining garlic I've turned off the auto watering nozzles to let it grow a bit slower in dryer conditions .

 Here in the UK we have got a heat wave the like of which we've not seen for donkey's years , the temp reached almost 30 oC in our back garden yesterday  hopefully it will give the garlic just the right conditions for a bumper crop. It was 83 o F inside the bungalow with the curtains drawn and the windows open.

llama momma wrote:Plantoid,

Hope this helps:

http://www.hoodrivergarlic.com/recipes.htm

 Thanks LM ....
That link is an interesting read ......... Dave rushes out to the kitchen and bungs the jar of herbs ,olive oil and garlic in the fridge , in readiness for freezing it in manageable portions tomorrow .
 I didn't realize the botulism:face:  angle was present .
Hopefully as it is only one day sat on the work top in the shade it will be  Ok .
If not ...See yah on the other side down in the furnace  .

I took off 1 & 1/14 pounds of scapes this morning ( 83 scapes ) .. what to do with them ??
 Easy ....someone said scape pesto here on ANSFG  ..looked on line found a recipe for 1 pound of scapes , got cracking and made it . 

 Cor Muvver , I wish someone had warned me that it's worse than eating raw garlic cloves & lumps of strong raw eye watering onions .

 It's made holes in my socks it's that hot , even after standing it in the fridge for four hours . I being a pig for punishment had another teaspoon of the fresh stuff this evening with pasta chicken lumps and a garden salad .. It was still mighty strong and belly paralyzing .. I've still got indigestion six hours after teatime. ( only four more ounces to eat before we go on holiday at the weekend  .

 The remaining pound and five ounces of the pesto has been decanted into several vac sealed bags and thrown in the freezer for use later in the year in such things like pasta dishes .

 We are going to get our revenge on the remaining scapes by lightly softening them in clarified butter then  having them with some salmon & another out the garden salad tomorrow night .

Enjoy those lovely scapes!  Quite versatile.  I froze nearly all of mine and they are wonderful if you slice off little bits sautéed in butter, becomes nicely mild flavored, then cook your breakfast eggs and wilt any greens with it and add peppers too.  Talk about a Power Breakfast!  Yum.

Camprn: is the same true with shallots and onions - if certified disease free, one doesn't have to rotate the crop? I was planning on moving my garlic, etc. but they did so well in the bed that I had them in, I would love to use it again

Typically, I don't rotate crops unless there is a disease issue. Just be sure to dump a bunch, like a wheelbarrow full, of homemade compost into the bed before planting garlic in the fall.

I have a question for nonna, have you ever seen softnecks put out scapes? I had 5 out of 100 of them do that this year.

plantoid wrote:I took off 1 & 1/14 pounds of scapes this morning ( 83 scapes ) .. what to do with them ??
.

 plantoid, this is our first year growing garlic and I tried a small bit of a scape raw - wow, it just about knocked me over it was that strong. But it becomes absolutely mild once tossed in some olive oil and grilled (or just heated up in a pan as we did). I wish that we had planted more garlic just for the scapes!

plantoid wrote:I took off 1 & 1/14 pounds of scapes this morning ( 83 scapes ) .. what to do with them ??
 Easy ....someone said scape pesto here on ANSFG  ..looked on line found a recipe for 1 pound of scapes , got cracking and made it . 

 Cor Muvver , I wish someone had warned me that it's worse than eating raw garlic cloves & lumps of strong raw eye watering onions .

 It's made holes in my socks it's that hot , even after standing it in the fridge for four hours . I being a pig for punishment had another teaspoon of the fresh stuff this evening with pasta chicken lumps and a garden salad .. It was still mighty strong and belly paralyzing .. I've still got indigestion six hours after teatime. ( only four more ounces to eat before we go on holiday at the weekend  .

 The remaining pound and five ounces of the pesto has been decanted into several vac sealed bags and thrown in the freezer for use later in the year in such things like pasta dishes .

 We are going to get our revenge on the remaining scapes by lightly softening them in clarified butter then  having them with some salmon & another out the garden salad tomorrow night .

  Thanks for that description, Plantoid, you made me *really* "LOL".

I've always wondered why people say that scapes are "mild".  That's never been my experience--says she, who minced some & added them to a kickin' chicken salad yesterday--YUM!

P.S. Care to share that scape pesto recipe or post the link?

Planted these in mid Oct, 4 inches apart..(not sfg) no Mel's Mix here this year..just dirt.
When shoots came up in late Nov, I covered with a light coating of straw for the winter.
Uncovered and composted over the bed..in March
Pulled them out 3 days ago, next year will convert bed to Mel's Mix

last Nov

May 2013

July2013

July 2013

Here's  the recipe for the scape pesto (aka  poison )  I made .

Original recipe makes 3 1/2 cups  ( That's heck of a lot of rat poison    ) 

• 
  1 pound garlic scapes, cut into 2-inch pieces
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  1 1/4 cups grated Parmesan cheese
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  1 cup olive oil
  
  
  
  
  
  

• 
  1 tablespoon lemon juice
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 
  ground black pepper to taste
  
  
  
  
  
  

      


Directions

1. Blend the garlic scapes, Parmesan cheese, olive oil, lemon juice, and pepper together in a food processor until smooth.
   
   
   
   
   

It was whizzed for about three minutes  in the whizzer till it turned to a khaki oily paste with tiny crunchy lumps of scape & parmesan  left in it .

Plantoid, what would we do without your humor.  

I have harvested most of my hardnecks.  Some are not as large as I would like but someone awhile back said that it will take a couple of years for them to get used to the growing medium and this particular climate so I will take the small ones (no cloves) and plant them in the fall and then take the largest ones for use in the kitchen.  The rest will go back in the MM in the late fall.  I will say that the first year is not a disappointment.  It's a learning curve but we need to learn something new everyday anyway.  

GreatGranny
I keep reading from garlic farm sites that you should do the opposite of what you stated above, that is you should eat the small ones and plant the large cloves.  They say the biggest bulbs grow from the biggest cloves.  So small cloves will only get you small bulbs. You can do it any way you want but thought you'd want to know how to quickly grow the biggest ones.  Hope this helps.

Agreed with the planting of the largest cloves of garlic. Onion sets, you want the smallest ones for planting.

Oops.  I had read somewhere that the small ones that did not develop cloves could be planted.  That article said that they would grow and develop - maybe not like the larger ones but anyway, I'm going to try that as well as the normal planting.  I don't remember where I read it.  Sorry.

Okay, I will take the largest cloves and plant those then save the rest for the kitchen.

plant the large cloves.

My husband an me... spent the whole morning today cleaning and putting the garlic away.
I have about 300 head and about 60 of them are softneck and so I braided them. I have not watched the video, but tried to use the same principals as french braiding my hair.....  
Our garlic has been hanging for over 2 weeks, and most of them were all brown. I am a bit concerned that some of them appeared a bit moist between the cloves .... the ones I peeled down to the cloves.
It was a very wet June here and I did not get the 2 weeks without any watering prior to harvest.
SOOO next year I am going to keep the garlic a ways a way from everything else so I can attempt to dry the ground out before I harvest without drying out the other plants nearby.

Regarding my question about softneck garlic putting out scapes, it seems that it is not an unknown occurrence and that sometimes plants will revert to hardenck, typically if the plant becomes stressed.

A few of my plants that did this, producing very small bulbs. I also had a few put out the bulge of bulblets in the stem, those were also small. I will use neither in my seed stock for next year.