Mary Mary quite contrary, how does your garlic grow?

Your garlic looks great camp. I was drooling over it in the photo's you posted in the June in New England thread. Mine looks so sad right now all layed over and turning yellow and brown. I've pulled away some of the dirt around a head or two and they look about average size to perhaps a bit small with a nice red skin...guess they do call it German Red I do hope my garlic turns out

Rooster have you fed them compost tea or top dressed? they do like water and more water.
I top dressed mine about 3 weeks ago.

I did add compost in April (I think?) and again just last week.

I hope I haven't been under watering the garlic here lately. You made me nervous so I went out and gave them a good watering.

Crap, I betcha that's why my garlic stopped growing "all of the sudden" not enough water, ugh. I read somewhere not to get garlic too wet of it will rot so I barely watered it.

Garlic here had a non winter that was well over prepared for so it got almost too good a start. A few were white and a foot long when the mulch leaves were pulled back. A few of them did not make it but were replanted in March from some of the same type from left overs from the cooking bags. The garlic got a couple lite feedings and fairly regularly captured rain water was applied. Scapes were trimmed off this week (did leave a very few to see how that goes). Made some kicking good pesto and hummus with them. My beds are quite moist down at the bulb level so watering will be stopped to let them dry out better for harvest. For my first crop it looks like a very good harvest could be ahead. There are a lot of one inch stalks and the one I inched down to is almost tennis ball size. Some others are smaller by type but hoping the missing scapes will give them a size boost. Many have one or two brown leaves at the bottom so it looks like time to prepare for harvesting in a few weeks or sooner. In my case more watering would be counter productive to a good cured harvest.

Yup me too lol...

Scapes are cut and cut up in the freezer...love them in stews and such so far!

Lower leaves are brown and some are starting lay down...

Just spent 3 days camping so not sure what is going on at the moment..

Was in town each day just not a lot of time...Water and run..

Pulled an elephant garlic that had died down and turned yellow. Has a nice bulb for a regular garlic but not what I expected from an elephant garlic. AND it has several bulblets around the roots. Can these bulblets be replanted now or can they be held in the fridge for fall planting?

Kay

If you save them for fall planting don't store them in the fridge because it will cause them to sprout!

So sorry to hear about the hail, just reading that a tornado hit a town in Alberta (pretty rare), and that it hit the tornado reporting station... Sort of ironic.

I have done a lot of research about mulching garlic and from what I read it can cause them to rot, so I never have....
(I am talking leaves etc...)

A few of mine are sending up scapes, so you just cut them up and put them in the freezer?

I harvested some of my garlic yesterday and plan on harvesting the rest of them tomorrow - I can't wait to see how many I have and if they are good!

Any advice as to what to plant where the garlic is being removed?

I hope everyone is enjoying the great weekend weather!

Nice to hear of your crop .

My three foot tall garlic has been thrashed by a couple fo days of high 60 mile an hour winds and lashing rain storms this lastfew days which have left us with over seven inches of rain in just over 24 hours .

The bulbs are just below the surface and may carry on growing if I use canes to support each plant

plantoid, are these the ones you stratified by putting them in the fridge?

Cheyenne, if water were a problem, we'd never get mature garlic here in Western Oregon! Somewhere on the forum someone posted a wise method of measuring water needs in Mel's Mix: stick your finger in, if it feels just barely moist, it's okay, so try to keep it that way.

Yes, you can plant the small, hard "bulblets" that form around the base of elephant garlic. Make up a nursery bed, plant the little suckers, and replant them the following summer, they will have formed a small bulb.

Thanks for the info NonnaPapaVino! Good to know, everytime I watered the garden I would be careful not to water the garlic to much because I thought I would make it rot . Don't know why I never thought to stick my finger in it, I do everywhere else to make sure it's moist, just not at the garlic!

With all the talk about Garlic here, I decided to "harvest" one of mine.
BOY what a mistake, it was a very large plant, but the clove had not yet even divided.

So I WILL wait for them to turn yellow and fall over.
I did go out and harvest the scapes and I put them in a fritatta with mushrooms, and left over turkey. and goat cheese.

last year when we pulled out our garlic we found those small hard yellow *bulblets*

i saved them and forgot to plant them.....well...we must have missed one because we have a nice garlic that has come up on its own this spring

hugs

rose

i saved them and forgot to plant them.....well...we must have missed one because we have a nice garlic that has come up on its own this spring

I had the bulblets in my garden in Oregon, but there I had elephant garlic, so are bulblets a phenomena with elephant garlic?

I will be interested to see what that garlic turns out to be.

True garlic either sends up scapes with bulbils at the top (hardnecks) or does not send up scapes (softnecks) unless it's truly stressed and thinks it needs to propagate somehow. Some softnecks will occasionally form bulbils on their stems about 3-6 inches above the ground--Chet's, for instance. Don't know why, I try to give all of them the same treatment. Elelphant garlic has a garlicky taste, but is more closely related to leeks; it forms the hard bulblets around its base as a back-up way to propagate. Does this help?

its an Elelphant garlic.....thats what we had planted there last year.....and the hard bulblets were at the base of the bulb under ground.....i remember asking about it last year....and someone here told me to save them and replant them.....the funny thing is last year they did not send up a scape....this one seems to have a scape...unless its sending a flower?.....i have never seen first hand nor tasted a scape before....but to me....from what i have seen pic's of....it looks as if it has a scape......weird!

we shall see what it looks like.....last year the elephant garlic just formed a golf ball size bulb.....there wernt any cloves......

if it turns out to be a differnt kind of garlic....then it must have come from a critter planting it there LOL

i will keep ya posted

With elephant garlic, it's a flower stalk, and a beautiful one. When it blooms out, you'll immediately notice its resemblance to onion flowers, and several flowering aliums. One year, I cut 8 or more E-garlic stalks and arranged them in a large, heavy vase, and brought it in to enjoy. The overwhelming smell of onion/garlic necessitated the bouquet being moved outside. But it sure was pretty when folks came for barbeque! Oh, and bees really like the flowers.

thanks nonna.....glad you told me it is a flower and not a scape ....cause i was a thinkin about eating it tonight in our dinner......LOL....

hugs

rose..... who is off to see if she can save the flower seeds :drunken: ....if the flower makes seeds ???

My small elephant garlic and bulblets and a Genovese tomato that is blight stricken. Looks like it is trying to ripen so I brought it inside instead of trashing. The black spot is hard not soft like blossom end rot. The garlic at least looks like it developed cloves.


Kay

UGH! Blight is just TERRIBLE! and so contagious... if any one else hears there is blight in your area and you are not seeing it in your own garden, you could try a preventative treatment...

I should be clear, since this is the garlic thread... you would want to pretreat tomatoes, eggplants and potatoes. Garlic is not affected by the tomato blight.

No, most often garlic is not bothered by diseases if well grown. However (and a big however), there are diseases that can totally destroy your garlic patch. One of the ugliest is a pathogen that turns the cloves mushy and makes the whole head of garlic smell totally nasty. It hit us several years ago, and there are still parts of the north garden where we dare not plant garlic. We learned an expensive lesson on not buying garlic from an unknown source (we replanted cloves from garlic bought at a farmers' market). Caution: only plant garlic from a reliable source. Didn't really want to revisit our experience, but it's important for garlic growers to understand.