Spring planting garlic

[barefootgardener]

Nice pictures, Sari. Your garlic looks real good. You have come a long way with your garlic, and, I know you want to protect them from the freezing temperatures at this point. Hopefully your temperatures will even out soon so you can get them all planted. My fall planted garlic started to sprout up a three weeks back when the tempoeratures rose up into the seventies. We then dropped down to single digits and had snow on top of that for three days..The garlic pulled through just fine with no damage to the tops.. The roots were already established by that time ..

What varieties of hardneck and softneck garlic are you growing?

A number of years back we tried spring planting garlic and it was a bust for us.. We tried it for a couple years, but, to no success. To be honest, we neglected the garlic beds. It was so hard to keep up with the weeds and the heat.. Now we order good size bulbs from a reliable source, and plant in the fall. It works better for us..So far so good.

Good luck with your gardens.. I look forward to more pictures and updates.

Ginny

[svalli]

The spring planted hardnecks are an unkown Russian variety, Spanish Morado and Polish Ornak. Softnecks are French Sabadrome and Therador.

I planted all of these also last fall plus some others. There are over 400 cloves planted in a bed, which is covered with black plastic mulch. Softneck named Messidor did year ago well as fall planted, so I did not save any of that variety for spring planting. I ordered Elephant garlic and three hardneck varieties (Moravian Giant, Mikulow Wight and Topinky) from the Isle of Wight and planted all of those already last fall. Now I think that I should have saved half of the cloves for spring planting to make sure that I do not loose the new varieties, if they do not survive the winter. Maybe next weekend we will have time to drive out to the country side and I can check, if the garlic is coming up.

I do not know, if planting directly to ground in the spring would work here, because it takes so long for the ground to thaw enough for planting and then the growing season would be shorter. The rootrainers seem to work perfectly for starting the garlic, before it can be planted in ground. I will also use the black plastic on the bed where these will be planted. I make X-shape slits on the plastic before spreading it on the ground. It takes a bit more work during planting time, but makes weeding much easier and also retains moisture in the ground.

Sari

[svalli]

Last weekend we finally drove out to the country and I had a chance to check my fall planted garlic bed. It was quite sad sight. Only the unknown Russian had survived pretty well. There was no growth on Ornak and Morado, just one Elephant garlic from 36 planted had signs of life and the others had significant losses. Last winter was bad for many plants, so it was not a surprise, but still it felt quite depressing.
Luckily I had the spring planted ones to fill the gaps. I will definitely do this refrigerator vernalization and spring planting also in future for varieties, which I do not want to loose in case of bad winter.

Sari

[henry]

Spring planting if the garlic is given the cold treatment works well, the problem we find with it is that it takes longer to grow and we are unable to harvest and cure in time for fall sales, for home use we can aways find a way to cure it.

Originally Posted by svalli

Last weekend we finally drove out to the country and I had a chance to check my fall planted garlic bed. It was quite sad sight. Only the unknown Russian had survived pretty well. There was no growth on Ornak and Morado, just one Elephant garlic from 36 planted had signs of life and the others had significant losses. Last winter was bad for many plants, so it was not a surprise, but still it felt quite depressing.
Luckily I had the spring planted ones to fill the gaps. I will definitely do this refrigerator vernalization and spring planting also in future for varieties, which I do not want to loose in case of bad winter.

Sari

[henry]

Spring planted Creole garlic.

Burgundy.

Creole Red.

Ajo Rojo.

[Father'sDaughter]

Beautiful roots!

How do you decide when to pull them? I've always heard that you should wait until all but five leaves die off which for me is usually early July.

Last weekend I was talking to another grower who said he and others he knows leave their garlic in the ground until mid-August in CT in order to let them bulb up more. If I wait to pull them, they start to separate and rot. When I check a few earlier than that, they seem too small.

[henry]

Took a chance that they were big enough we sometimes get an early frost before the end of August and I wanted them to get some dry down time before it gets cold. Still learning what works for Creoles next year I will give them more fertilizer.

Originally Posted by Father'sDaughter

Beautiful roots!

How do you decide when to pull them? I've always heard that you should wait until all but five leaves die off which for me is usually early July.

Last weekend I was talking to another grower who said he and others he knows leave their garlic in the ground until mid-August in CT in order to let them bulb up more. If I wait to pull them, they start to separate and rot. When I check a few earlier than that, they seem too small.

[svalli]

That is great looking harvest Henry!

I lifted all my garlic in beginning of August. I had planted the ones started this spring in the rootrainers in the holes in my garlic bed, where the fall planted ones did not grow. This caused that it was hard to see how they did compared to the fall planted ones. Eventually I was able to tell them apart from the shape of the roots and from the potting mix with coir and perlite, which was still attached to the roots of the ones started in the rootrainers. I would say that in average the spring planted garlic of same variety grew as well as the fall planted ones, but the biggest heads were produced by the fall planted cloves.

In my city garden the garlic did not grow so well. This spring before planting the pre-sprouted garlic I amended the soil with compost from the bottom of my compost bin. I forgot that I had put all the garlic and onion stems in the compost pile previous fall. The stems had onion maggots, which then must have dug deeper into the compost to pupate. By using the compost I planted the onion flies directly to the garlic bed and it caused a disaster. The garlic started to grow well, but begun to wither in mid July. I had to lift them early and peel the bulb skins away to get any maggots, which were already between the cloves.

This year I packed all garlic stems into a plastic bag, which I shut tightly and will let freeze trough when the winter arrives. Next season I will not plant any garlic or onions in my city garden and also my country side garlic and onion beds will be relocated to an other field. I have learned a valuable lesson via my own stupid actions.

Sari

[bower]

I planted some bulbils from Nicky's swap in early spring before the last frost, and I was very pleased with the results. I think they grew as well as the fall planted ones.

Sari, I didn't realize that garlic losses can happen due to severe winter. I lost more than half the rounds I planted very late last fall, in a location very exposed to northerly winds. It is a sunny spot too, so not sure if there was freeze and thaw action as well. It was a relatively dry winter for us, and I had grass clippings instead of kelp mulch on most of the garlic. Definitely concluded that kelp is better. And to get the beds ready early, not to plant too late.

We had mites attack the garlic just as they were getting full size. Mostly only some wrappers were damaged, but I tried making garlic powder instead of curing the doubtful ones. Wow is that powder ever strong! It smells wonderful, and a nice way to salvage a damaged harvest.

[svalli]

Artificial vernalization and spring planting garlic worked so well that last fall I planted about 500 cloves and saved about 300 cloves for spring. Then when it was already too late to do any fall planting here, I got seed garlic as gift, purchased some from clearance and even ordered new ones still last month. Now I have much more to be planted spring time than what I did last fall.

Our old refrigerator, which I used for vernalization quit working last fall, so I kept the seed garlic in garage which has thermostat set to 50°F. I started planting them to rootrainers and pots after Christmas, but they were sprouting too early due to the temperature in the garage. I then moved all to the greenhouse in a shelf which has plastic hood and covered it with multiple layers of the light weight row cover. The temperature has been fluctuating between above freezing and some extremely cold days, so I put a 200W heater with thermostat in there, which keeps the temperature just above freezing. So far it looks good, I have already potted 540 cloves and those are growing roots, but there is not much new green growth, which simulates fall planting quite well. I have still eight bags of seed garlic waiting to be potted, those can easily have 400 additional cloves in them, so with these and the potted elephant garlic I could have 1000 garlic plants to plant into the field this spring. I think that the situation has now got out of hand totally.

Sari

[jtjmartin]

Just read the thread. Very interesting. We had a warm winter here in Virginia - I planted garlic in the fall and then again in late January after seeing some interesting varieties at a flower show.

I lived in Menomonee Falls and Sussex in Waukesha County - loved it!

Now trying to get use to the planting schedules in Virginia - it may be 82 today!

Jeff

[svalli]

I planted rest of the vernalized cloves to pots about a month ago and have kept all pots in the unheated greenhouse. It was getting maybe too warm in there during sunny days and the garlic stems were growing a bit too fast considering that the ground is still frozen. Today I moved all of the pots outdoors even we will still have nights below freezing. Garlic is hardy and should survive and hopefully this slows the growth a bit.

Sari

[MissS]

This is a very interesting thread. Thank you for sharing it Sari. I'm enjoying it.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by MissS

This is a very interesting thread. Thank you for sharing it Sari. I'm enjoying it.

Well said Patti. Me too.
Thank you again Sari!
Dutch

[GrowingCoastal]

Looking good Svali!