Harvesting Garlic

I have found when I keep adding garlic all the strands become too much to handle, so I thin the strands, cut off the loose leaves, and try to just keep braiding what is left of the main stalk. Also, by twisting the strands before folding over seems to help keep a nice tight braid.

I'm wondering if mine are going to be like Rooster's. They don't seem to be growing, and I've never had a scape. The package didn't say what kind of neck they were.

I didn't think they would be ready until fall, though.

A Gilroy Garlic company is at the fair. I had a Italian Seasoned Pickled garlic. Interesting...harder than a cuke and not much garlic flavor. I asked if they had brought any of their garlic ice cream, which is to die for...

Ava

camprn wrote:ROoster, Very nice looking garlic! And good job on braiding.

I just did my braiding the other day too. Wish I had more garlic to practice with.

WoW Camp! Your garlic is amazing.

Thanks ROo! Not bad for 24 Sq Feet. I am for sure going to have garlic through to next harvest.

I really think that the bone meal and a little bit of wood ash really help in getting it to bulb up. Top dressing with a good homemade compost round about May helps too, I think.

CampRN, you are correct: a side dressing of compost in May (with bonemeal, in my experience) means bigger heads of garlic. Our local master gardeners recommend a side dressing in April, and another in third week of May, but this is Oregon and YMMV. Our garlic headed up and matured a full two weeks earlier than last year. Warmer soil, you know. We grew four new (to us) varieties of garlic this year. Four were very satisfying: China Pink (very early), Mt. St. Helens Red (early part of mid-season), and Asian Tempest (mid-season). Sevilla Sunset was a complete bust--I think it was contaminated with some sort of blight--we pulled it and immediately burned it. The last variety harvested was Bavarian Purple, beautiful big heads, nice flavor. Except for Sevilla Sunset, cloves of all the other four will be replanted with our mainstay: Spanish Roja for next year. What's your favorite?

My normal garlic

But I don't know what variety this is I've never come across such a variety before .... it developed scrapes then each plant broke out in a rash and made several curly new softish stems each iof which led down to an individual bulb as in the picture ..... any ideas ?

It is only 18 inches or so tall, where a the stuff in the top picture got to 58 inches or so tall .

That looks like a shallot or a multiplier onion. My walking onions do that also. Does it smell like garlic? I have seen garlic do that if I miss one and do not pull it. Then if conditions are right (moist) it will split and each clove will start growing again.

Yep they smell like good honest garlic , the main stem comes right up out the middle and the bulbs are around it .
You've got me thinking .. I did transplant them into MM as they were sown on 11 NOV last year and it was only in early march this year that I finally managed to convert all the beds over to MM from a mix of mother earth and manure .

It looks like I have a decent November 2012 bulb stock for next years garlic .
They will follow on nicely from cleared carrot squares , all the cleared salad stuff & peas .
Thanks for the input.

The necked garlic were also sown at the same time and moved the same day but It could well be that these are the soft stemmed varieties .

RoOsTeR wrote:I've harvested all my garlic. All of my softnecks developed individual bulbs. They are small heads but all formed. Basically none of my hardneck garlic formed individual bulbs. They are all just one single head...Anyway, I was curious how to go about braiding garlic and found this video:

Did your hardneck single bulbs look like these?


That was all I got last year. I kept the little bulbs and replanted them in the autumn and this year they came out looking like this (or at least the first few did, I've left some in to see if they grow even bigger):


I also planted a few more cloves of garlic which again came out as little round bulbs. They did not have much in the way of green tops and did not get scapes. The replanted bulbs did get scapes however.

From this limited experience it seems to me that here where the growing season is short and cool, I need two years to grow hardneck garlic. I've not seen this written anywhere - but then again I had never heard of hardneck garlic until my 2 yearold plants put out scapes this summer!

Has anyone else found that their garlic takes two years? October-July followed by October-July.