Planted garlic and potato onions today Oct 26th :)

40 degrees outside.

Two 4X4 boxes with MM. I put one bad of black gold worm castings on each box and worked it into the MM. Since pulling up summer crops I hadn't added compost yet, so they needed it.

We planted 11 squares of potato onions, 4 in each square.

We planted garlic 5 to a square .
8 squares of a local variety that I picked up at the local farmers market.
1 square of Czechland Race
1 square of Early Portugese
1 Square Brown Tempest
2 squares Kuty
2 Squares Balarus
1 square Kazakhstan
2 squares Chamiskuri
2 squares Dushambe

I am so excited you guys I can barely stand it. How awesome would it be to never buy store bought garlic again? Or store bought onions?

Not accounting for any failure, which there is bound to be a few, I could potentially end up with 100 bulbs of garlic, and 44 onions that are multipliers!

That's a lot of garlic!! LOL! It is exciting though isn't it?!?! I share your excitement. Are these the ones your daughter was so excited about?

I planted my perennial onions yesterday and potted up some herbs to bring in the house.......chives, thyme, oregano. DH is making a shelf for me by the kitchen sink for my herbs and I will put a small grow light that I have above them. I have to laugh at how into all this gardening stuff he is getting. He never paid much attention to my gardening before. But he is learning to cook now too so that makes a difference it seems.

Best of luck with all of it.

GK

IT IS A LOT OF GARLIC!

We love to eat it...and I will need more seed for next fall. And I would like to give some away.

Ideally in a couple years I will plant 2 whole boxes of garlic each fall. If the onions work out I would like to do the same with them.

If you have planted two whole boxes with onions and garlic, where are you going to grow your spring, summer and fall veggies?

I'm laughing because I am getting ready to plant my onions, garlic and shallots and I am wondering where I will plant everything else this spring. DH only promised me 3 - 4 X 4 boxes. I hate to think that I will have to continue planting much in my old SFG that is amended soil, not Mel's Mix. The weeds were absolutely horrendous and I don't think I can deal with that again.

If you plant stuff in your old amended soil, use mulch to keep the weeds down. You can use grass clippings, straw, newspaper, shavings or sawdust. If you do use sawdust or shavings, your plants a bit of extra nitrogen rich liquid fertilizer to make up for what the sawdust robs from the soil. But I have used newspaper if weeds were really bad and it sure helped. Not as pretty as pure Mel's Mix, but would give you some extra growing room.

GK

I had four 4X4's this past spring. I am using 2 for onions and garlic. I get 4 more boxes this coming spring so will still have 6 open for spring stuff.

Just friggin tickled.....cannot stand it...

Dang, Girl! You are just too cute!

I wish I know what kinds of garlic I have. The one kind I know is Russian Red and I have only one square of it. I picked that up this past fall when we went to visit my sister and I bought it at a roadside garden stand. However, before that I had looked everywhere for garlic and nobody had any so in desperation I just planted some supermarket stuff. I have two squares of that. I also have two squares of some that a customer of mine gave me. He is Japanese and a wonderful gardener but his English is not so good so he couldn't tell me what kind it was. So I just call it Japanese garlic. So I have 5 squares of garlic but planted mine 9 to a square. maybe that is too close. We will see what happens next year. The supermarket variety is about 6 or 7 inches high. None of the other have come up with is good. They weren't supposed to until next spring but oh well. Gardening is all about experimenting.

GK

GK- I planted 4 BULBS of garlic this past spring...BULBS...as in...I didn't seperate the cloves and plant them individually! I had BEAUTIFUL plants but...lol...no actual garlic due to the error. I had CLUMPS of a tangled mess that SMELLED like garlic but was never going to develop right...lol. The verbiage on the packet said to plant the "cloves" but the photo showed planting the BULB. I am VERY visual so I just followed the photos.

The garlic I got from the farmers market I didn't even think to ask the kind, the farmer who sold it to me is located in Bonner's Ferry ID, so I am calling it Bonners Ferry Garlic.

the others I got from www.wegrowgarlic.com and I was careful to keep track where I planted what so I can see what we like the best etc for next year..IF I decide to buy some more for seed one more year.

I know A LOT of folks plant 9 to a square so I think you are good. I just wanted to give plenty of room for big bulb growth. If it doesnt help I may plant closer next year.

GK....you asked if these were the walking onions I planted with DD....no, those are in containers in the window room on the side of the house. I will plant them in the yard come spring. These that I planted today are POTATO ONIONS....Ander turned me onto it.... see this LINK

Jennie,

I'm chomping to get mine planted, but still a little warm here. Maybe next weekend.

I had a big laugh this past week and thought about your first garlic planting. I had forgotten, lost, ignored whatever some garlic I had planted this spring under a giant Collard plant. Anyway, it was ready to do its garlic thing again after I had forgotten it for its harvest and sprang up about a week ago. You can just imagine, all nine of those little cloves last spring in my ignored square had apparently made 9 beautiful bulbs hidden from me. Now I have 9 beautiful CLUMPS of garlic! I'm just taking a knife and carving off little shoots (cloves as they are) from the mother bulbs. They do taste good and are like using scallions, only garlicky.

Making lemonade out those forgotten garlic bulbs.... uh, sort of

Jane

THATS GREAT JANE!!! I get a good laugh every time I think about it too.....this journey is so much fun! I have learned so much this first year about so many things it is just amazing to me.

With all this talk about garlic, I'm going to stop at the local Farmer's Market tomorrow and see if I can get some organic garlic so I, too, can plant a square or two of cloves.
I also have space in my A-frame so I can try there as well.
I love garlic but never grew it before.

I planted my potato onions on Tuesday in a raised bed marked off into grids. It's a little early for me, but we're in a drought again here, and they were calling for rain this week so I figured it would be good to get them in the ground and try to get a little rain on them.

I planted nine onions for every two squares. I planted five in the first square with one in the middle and one in each corner, like the five on a pair of dice. The next square had four, with one in the center top, one on each center side, and one on the center bottom. The next square was back to the pattern of five, and so on. That made all the onions planted the same distance apart in each row of squares, and I was able to get in one extra onion in every two squares.

I did something similar, but I wanted the onions between my garlic squares so that I would be able to easier keep track of what type of garlic is in which square...so my "5" squares were garlic and my top center, bottom center and side centers were potato onions.

Thanks to this thread I planted garlic today, as well.
Eight in the A-frame, and 4 in each of 2 squares in the raised beds.
They say plant 4 cloves in each foot square 4-6 weeks before the ground freezes so I think I'm ok with this even tho its October in Maine. Today is 63 and tonite will be around 40.

Here's one square with the compost added on top. I dug it in.

These 2 squares had winter rye growing so I turned them under.

This is my A-frame with the garlic planted in the two far outside ends with my lettuces struggling down the middle.
I've got wire hangers over the lettuce in case it got too sunny, but haven't needed to protect them and I've just put some wire clothes hangers over the 2 plots in the raised beds so I know where to cover when it gets really cold before the 4 weeks. I've got towels by the doorway in case.
I'm crossing my fingers that we all get a terrific bounty of garlic next season.
Thanks for starting this thread and keeping it going so I could get nudged to make my move.
I'm grateful.

Can I still get potato onions? I checked baker creek but they didn't have them online, burpee and gurney's don't have anything listed at all.

Check out this site:

http://www.southernexposure.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=PONION

This is where I got mine. I just checked and they still seemed available.
Good luck, you'll love them!

Jane

Thanks! I just ordered the Yellow Multiplier Onions. I hope they get here soon I can't wait to plant them.
Now... Where to put them...

YAY Quiltbea on the new garlic planting & YAY Aub on being the newest potato onion convert!! Awesome!

Aub wrote:Thanks! I just ordered the Yellow Multiplier Onions. I hope they get here soon I can't wait to plant them.
Now... Where to put them...

Aub, although they are in the same family the yellow multiplier onions aren't the same thing as potato onions. (You had to scroll farther down on the SESE catalog site to get to the potato onions.) I've never grown the yellow multipliers, but from what I see on the SESE catalog info they are 2/3 the size of potato onions, and it sounded as though they may always cluster rather than growing a single large bulb, but I couldn't really tell for certain from the description.

Let us know how they turn out.

I just double checked my order, I did get the potato onions! I just called it the wrong thing. I was worried for a minute!
Are they pretty quick to ship things? How many do I plant per square?

Aub....we talked about the potato onions for many days here in this thread:

https://squarefoot.forumotion.com/general-sfg-talk-f5/sese-has-large-potato-onions-for-sale-t3900.htm?highlight=sese

I think we talked about how many per square...I put 4 in per square but ander alternates 5 and 4 like she descibed above.

There is a TON of awesome info in the thread above ENJOY!

Middlemamma, your new avatar pic is great. You & your kids look so cute.

Thanks Dixie I love 'em....they drive me to drink LOL...but I love 'em with everything I got.