Just pulled garlic

Mine were in the garage briefly, then I hung all of it in the basement with a fan running 24/7.

trolleydriver wrote:

sanderson wrote:Re-purposing at its finest.

Found a problem with this location.  It gets the late afternoon and early evening sun. I read that the garlic should be kept out of direct sun while curing. Other possible locations are inside the garage, inside the garden shed, under the big pine tree and in the basement.  Maybe I will try a few bulbs in each location to see which works best.

  I'm guessing in your basement , as it will offer some protection from Garlic flies & exhaust fumes

Thanks for the advice plantoid. I don't think exhaust fumes will be an issue since we don't use the garage for the cars in the summer except if we are going to get a hail storm or when we are loading a vehicle for a vacation trip. My concern is that it does get quite hot in the garage when the doors are closed. The basement is the opposite. It's actually cold due to the air conditioning. This will turn out to be another one of my experiments with a few garlic bulbs in each of several locations.

I have tied and hung them from a wire coat hanger on a door jamb and on the kitchen table over-head light.

I harvested my softneck garlic three weeks ago. It was planted late, using small cloves from a friend ...and it wasn't in MM. Result: Very small heads. I'll have to taste and see if I'm wowed. If I am, I suspect I'm better off buying big cloves from somewhere than trying to plant back these little things.

I harvested my hardneck garlic about a week ago, and finally got it braided and hung in the (dehumidifier-equipped) basement today. My garlic started from huge-large cloves is on the left, and garlic started from medium-small cloves on the right. All grown in MM, but quite the size difference! I liked harvesting garlic out of MM much better than trying to get them out of dirt without skewering them with a digging tool.


I'll be planting back a good portion of the 14 large ones, and I'll probably just eat the other ...39? if you count the small ones. I like the idea of buying fewer (or maybe no) heads from the grocery store. The medium/small ones were ready. The big ones will be ok, but they could have gone another week. I wanted the squares back for planting peas.

Nice garlic, CC!
Thanks for the thanks, Rock! I hope you can find compatible onions!
Plantoid, thanks for the explanation on that different harvesting method - I'll have to try that next year.
Llama Mama - thanks for the coat rack photo/post. It was just what I needed to figure out where to hang my garlic: Unused portable clothing rack.
TD - A dozen is a good start. I only had a few my first year, too. The butterflies are great: Not only do monarchs like Rose of Sharon, they like stinking rose, too!

I like your clothing rack. Glad my coat rack pic helped.  
   Maybe you know, if you replant small garlic it's suppose to get bigger each year as it acclimates to your local soil conditions. The issue is tying up precious growing space and time.

We've had a final mad rush to clear & harvest some of the beds before we go on holiday , I found I'd got more garlic & onions than I first thought .

 In May about four weeks after putting in another 80 onion sets and 20 garlic cloves we had a massive half hour long hail storm that totally flattened  all the 10 inch tall standing onions & garlic in that bed . When the 2 inches of hail ice  melted I found that all the greenery was a very sad & sorry looking bruised green colour .

 I decided that perhaps they might recover & give up a few onions & garlic , so left them alone not even bothering to remove any airborne weed ( plenty of them ) .

 As I harvested & cleared the bed ready to put in a new charge of home made compost for the late winter green transplants I was delighted to find that nearly all the onions had survived and grown to well over golf ball size. Unfortunately the garlics didn't do so good , only nine survived .

 Total amounts of garlic & onions is about 1 & 1/2 pound of garlic and 17 pounds of onions from two beds , one which was sheltered from the hailstones .

llama momma wrote:I like your clothing rack. Glad my coat rack pic helped.  
   Maybe you know, if you replant small garlic it's suppose to get bigger each year as it acclimates to your local soil conditions. The issue is tying up precious growing space and time.

Good to know! There are two or three varieties of hardnecks hanging there in my photo, and don't know what any of them are. Maybe I'll keep some of the medium purple ones for growing after all, since they're part way adapted at this point and have the potential to improve in size.

I thought the following would be an interesting read for selecting planting stock for northern hard neck varieties ---

The garlic book I'm using says planting small cloves from small bulbs will pretty much result in more small bulbs. (whoops, I thought bulbs always got bigger once acclimated) 
 
He believes the cloves from the largest bulbs over 2-1/2 inches diameter will end up returning plants with poor vigor and extreme lack of uniformity in bulb size and quality.   He (Ron Engeland of Filaree Farms) says you might as well enjoy eating the biggest ones.  In his book, Growing Great Garlic, he says he gets the healthiest and most consistent sized bulbs by planting cloves from 2 to 2-1/2 inch diameter bulbs. 

Think I'll measure my planting stock this year and take detailed notes on results.  A lot of my 2015 garlic harvest came from monster size bulbs because I thought bigger was always better.  I missed out on some info from this book.  Glad I'm rereading and see what happens.  After all, this is one farmer and one book..

Last year I had a tremendous harvest of garlic - both softneck and hardneck.

This year unfortunately most of the softneck garlic seemed to have rotted and were damp.

Luckily the hardneck did better but my harvest was small.

We did have a lot of rain this year. I also move the garlic from box to box each year.

Any suggestions of what went wrong?

Thank you.

llama momma wrote:I thought the following would be an interesting read for selecting planting stock for northern hard neck varieties ---

The garlic book I'm using says planting small cloves from small bulbs will pretty much result in more small bulbs. (whoops, I thought bulbs always got bigger once acclimated) 
 
He believes the cloves from the largest bulbs over 2-1/2 inches diameter will end up returning plants with poor vigor and extreme lack of uniformity in bulb size and quality.   He (Ron Engeland of Filaree Farms) says you might as well enjoy eating the biggest ones.  In his book, Growing Great Garlic, he says he gets the healthiest and most consistent sized bulbs by planting cloves from 2 to 2-1/2 inch diameter bulbs. 

Think I'll measure my planting stock this year and take detailed notes on results.  A lot of my 2015 garlic harvest came from monster size bulbs because I thought bigger was always better.  I missed out on some info from this book.  Glad I'm rereading and see what happens.  After all, this is one farmer and one book..

Very interesting. Glad I've I got a few months to decide what to do. (Mis-typed decide as decode... but maybe it's not the wrong word.)

I looked at Baker Creek last night. They're planning to ship garlic sometime after Sept 1.

So if you're planning to order from them, I wouldn't wait too long. The rush is about to begin...

Atlanta Marie is correct.  It's wise, I think, to order garlic in August.  Otherwise, your selection will be quite limited.

Blah.  Just pulled my garlic and it was a dismal failure compared to last year.  I thought anyone could grow it easily.  The only thing I can figure is the garlic I planted was not good for planting.  I just bought some organic local bulbs from my local farm market.  My neighbour bought cloves from a farm supply store.  The previous year he gave me some of them for my first try and they worked great.  This year not so much.  Better luck to me this fall.

Hey P14shooter, don't give up on the organic store bought bulbs. It may have been a number of things that went wrong. It could be a variety not suitable to your zone. I have had success with store bought garlic, it wasn't great first year, but the second and succeeding years it got bigger. A neighbor gave me some that he had been growing many years and it was tasty and big. Once again the first year I planted it it was OK, but the next years it got better.
This year I tried some soft neck, it did OK, but small. I am going to try it again next year, we'll see what happens.
One thing I am going to do this year is put garlic around the border of all my gardens, the biggest problem will be to keep them watered.  Good luck and enjoy.

Dunkinjean wrote:Last year I had a tremendous harvest of garlic - both softneck and hardneck.

This year unfortunately most of the softneck garlic seemed to have rotted and were damp.

Luckily the hardneck did better but my harvest was small.

We did have a lot of rain this year. I also move the garlic from box to box each year.

Any suggestions of what went wrong?

Thank you.

Too much rain will contribute to rotting, as will planting too deep.  Here is an article that explores many aspects of growing garlic. Maybe this will help ?
http://www.growingformarket.com/articles/how-and-when-to-plant-garlic

Llama Momma,

Thank you for the article on garlic.
Maybe I will try again this fall, I just have to prove to myself I can grow garlic again ...lol.

That was a very good article.  Thanks LM.

Thanks, LM, I was so surprised that I got zero garlic after planting 16 cloves....especially after seeing it up last fall in the weirdly warm late fall, then mulching heavily to save the bolting cloves....

Never give up!  Never surrender!  (Galaxy Quest). Or at least not after one try!

Glad everyone liked the article!

Well, I decided to give planting garlic another try since I absolutely love fresh garlic. I just ordered some for planting in the fall.