I thought they were goners

[GoDawgs]

This year I'm trying two new-to-me garlics, Siberian and Russian Inferno, in addition to the Maiskij and Shilla I've grown for the past three years. All were planted the Oct 14 at 4" deep. All but the Siberian were up by Oct 28. No sign of the Siberians. I wonder why because the cloves that were planted looked just fine.

Then lo AND behold, a couple of days ago, 39 days after planting, I happened to notice that four were poking up above the straw mulch! Today there's a total of seven out of 19 planted that are up. I peeked under the mulch in a few places and a few more are coming.

If any of you have grown Siberian, can you tell me if taking a long time to come up is the norm for this variety? Maybe 4" deep is too much for them? The inquiring mind wants to figure out why.

[Worth1]

How deep did you plant them?

[imp]

The post says 4 inches deep.

[zendog]

I believe cold helps trigger growth in garlic, particularly hard necks, so some types may take more "chilling" time to get into gear. I think the other three garlic varieties you are growing that came up earlier are all Asiatic or Turban types, which are known to do well in warmer climates. The Siberian is a regular hard neck I believe and people often talk about how cold hardy hard neck types are. So the fact that it behaves differently and maybe needed more time in the cold soil to get growing seems reasonable to me.

[Worth1]

Takes about 14 days for mine to come out of the soil with top planted about one inch under the soil.
So was yours four inches from top of bottom?
I dont have any soil freeze here at all.
Also the cloves put out a tremendous amount of roots before they even think about sprouting a top.
In my situation this can go on for over a week.
They are well anchored before the tips come out of the soil.
My reasoning for planting a little more shallow it for the cloves to be exposed to cooler temperatures where I live.
I figured if following the rules didn't do well for hard neck in my area then maybe breaking them would produce better results.
High speed steel was discovered and made by two guys breaking the rules.
Nothing to lose and everything to gain even if it is knowledge and possibly a new way of doing things.

[GoDawgs]

They were planted 4" deep (bottom of the cloves). They were also pre-chilled for 10 weeks at 44-46 degrees in a small refrigerator, an experiment I was doing this year to see if it made any difference.

Last year and the year before the Maiskij and Shilla were planted 2" down with no pre-chilling and they came up in about 7 days. I'm assuming the extra time this year for all was due to the deeper planting.

I've read that the Siberian will also finish later than the others. The turbans will most likely be ready around mid May.

[Worth1]

I had no time to pre chill mine.
There is a very good gardener on YouTube from the UK that found very good results pre chilling for 40 days.
Allotment Diary is the channel.
Or something like that.