Think my garlic is ready??

[JRinPA]

That sounds like a plan, imp.

Greg...looks real nice.

Question, if you picked the garlic three weeks ago, what temp / where / how did you cure it?

Last year I basically let it hang in the basement until Nov, with a fan on it the first month to cure. It is high 70s to low 80s during the summer. No notes of course but it seems to me when I turned off the fan, I cut the stalks down some, chose some seed stock, but left them hang. When I needed some I'd get a few cloves for the kitchen. After planting in Nov. I brown bagged what was left.

[JRinPA]

Hey I looked at that page. Who knew there could be that many different kinds.

I'm pretty sure ours is called "garlic".

This is one of the broken wrappers. I think it tastes about the same, but its very nice to overload the press with one clove instead of stuffing 4 or 5 little ones in there!

[bower]

Well, up here I am just seeing the tips of what will be scapes in a week or two. I'm scraping the bottom of that brown bag and, you know, it is the small purple stripe garlic bulbs that are still really sound. I have a little softneck NY white which is still edible but they are sprouted. My porcelains are long gone.

I peeled a lot of little cloves from my salvage stash tonight as we had friends over for a meal. My son went to make a radish leaf pesto and he wanted lots of garlic so I gave him the turban I bought last week. He was really not pleased with the flavor but he ended up cooking it furiously with the pasta and it was pretty delicious I must say... all the same, I am surprised how different the turban is, and how spoiled I am on hardneck garlics, especially the porcelains. But I'm growing out more purple stripes and I do believe they're going to be a mainstay as well.

[meganp]

Originally Posted by velikipop

How many years does it take for you to get a nice bulb, growing from bulbils? I have tried on several occasions and never succeed.

Hello Velikipop, it normally takes four seasons for my bulbils to grow to regular sized bulbs but even the first and second year rounds and tiny bulbs are fine to eat. I only grow for domestic use so size is not as important as if I were selling my garlic. Where I live is 300m about sea level and the lowest winter temperature averages mInus 8C. I usually plant the entire umbel, don't bother separating the bulbils and the loose ones get sprinkled thickly in a furrow. What happens to the bulbils that you plant?

[bower]

It was great to re-read this thread as harvest time approaches for me. It's been very hot by local standards although we did have a wet spell in July, and sure enough my garlic is looking like other growers' with "normal" summers - lots of brown and yellow tips. My three weeks from scapes date for the earliest porcelains is this Wednesday, and I went out after my reread and counted mostly green leaves, 5 or better. I doubt they will be down to 4 by Wednesday, but I could be wrong.


Also this year I have scapes on which I'm planning to leave - and will leave those plants as long as possible ie give them some extra weeks if it doesn't turn too wet and cold. Wondered if anyone is using the scapes as an indicator of crop being ready and if so, would you say ready or wait?


Here are pics of the porcelain scapes.

[bower]

Secondly, I had some Persian Star and Chesnok Red, that are running a week later than the porcelains in terms of scape time, but the leaves are yellowing and going down faster. Mostly at 4 or 5 green leaves already, but the green has a fair bit of yellowing too. I'm sure they won't be ready until next week, but here's a pic of the scapes as they look now, kind of a shepherd's crook shape.


Also, Henry gave me advice about these Purple Stripes, that they can size up a lot in the last week. So I don't want to hurry them and maybe I will have to leave them until they have less than 4 green? Not sure. They are looking the same in two different beds, so it's their natural response to these weather conditions, not a problem with the place grown.

[svalli]

Looks good bower!
Have you dug the soil above the bulb to see how the cloves and wrappers are looking?

When I pulled my garlic, some of the scapes had already straightened totally, but quite many were still drooping down. I count the remaining leaves to indicate the amount of wrappers around the bulb. Many times the the wrapper of the lowest green leaf is already breaking down, so with four mostly green leaves you would get three good wrappers for the storage. If you have dry weather, you could still maybe wait a bit, but if it is going to rain a lot, I would pull the garlic before the rain.

Sari

[bower]

Thanks Sari! That is good info about the wrappers.

I was thinking the same about leaving them a bit longer if I can.


We have two days of "heat warning" coming up, and then the forecast is showing about 8 mm rain on Thursday, and 8-10 again on Sunday, with high temperatures remaining in the range 19-24 C, so still very much summer weather, and perhaps warm enough for the soil to dry again quickly and/or be transpired by the plants? I would be more concerned about the rain if the temperatures were peaking around 15 C and no dry days in between.



Yesterday I searched through all my garlic patches and found two smaller plants with just three green leaves left, so I pulled them to take a look. One was a Persian Star, and could definitely have done with more growing time IMO. The other was a three-yr-old Music with just two cloves, and I think quite close to the clove size I expected, although most of the garlic in that patch are still quite green with 6 leaves on most, so no need to hurry those. Both bulbs have nice wrappers afaict, but the outer one already breaking down.



Two things I noticed: (1) the soil at bulb level is still quite moist enough for growing. I was a bit surprised because the surface is so dry and my vegetable beds have needed a lot of watering. My main garlic beds haven't been watered all season so I was a little bit worried that they were too dry. (2) the other thing I was happy to see no sign of mites or wireworms damage. iirc the mites like humid weather and perhaps wetter soil; it doesn't seem that the conditions suited them so far. Now that I think of it, the year I had mite damage was very wet.



I may dig a few of the big porcelains on Wednesday just to see how they are, and leave the others for a dry day next week, aiming to get to four leaves vs 5. Then I can compare, whether the ones left longer also started to suffer from pests, and how much more they grew being left to 4 leaves.

[bower]

I stepped out this evening to check the garlic after another really scorching hot day, and realized that they really are drying down faster than I thought. I decided to take up some of the garlic from my porcelain grow out bed right away that were down to 4 leaves, and after cleaning them up I took a pic to compare the size of that row of extra 'full size' cloves vs the third year Music from bulbils (2nd divided bulb).


With the tight spacing and probably overall not as good conditions, even the full size cloves only produced small bulbs, but some of the 3rd year bulbil growout Music are just as big, a little shy of 2 inches. I expect my main crop porcelains to be plenty bigger, which I also spaced more generously. But still I think these 3rd year cloves will produce good sized bulbs next year.


Some of the smaller plants turned out to have just two cloves, and this is a good outcome for sizing up seed stock, as those two cloves are a good size. Some others have three cloves and two of them are large one small. So you can't always bank on multiplying your stock by X4, but you can certainly get to full size bulbs in a few years, with porcelains like Music.

[bower]

As it turns out, I may have been misleading about the size of 3 year olds compared to full size Music... After pulling the main crop of porcelains it's obviously not even close. I do think I did better with previous 3 yr old bulbs, but not this time. Spacing does seem to make a big difference, as the same garlics were smaller even with slightly tighter spacing in the second main bed. YMMV!

[bower]

Just before I got to digging some garlic yesterday, a friend dropped by and she told me they had lost 1/3 of their crop to mold. They used a wood chip mulch and apparently that was not so good, and maybe watered too much as well. Lots of pink color she said. I was planning to dig only the ones with four leaves left, but I did see a few spots of orange and pinkish color here and there, and so the mood was on me to keep losses to an absolute minimum, and let someone else get the bragging rights for largest garlic... I never win that competition anyway! And for some reason, I always see the most damages of one kind or another, on the biggest garlic in the field.

Seeing a few spots here and there in the dirt, I decided to dig all but the ones with scapes before it rained... and having an extra leaf on many of them, I decided to tear them all down to a clean wrapper immediately. I have never done this before except for a few badly damaged ones, but those seemed to cure fine if they were cleaned up. So now the whole porcelain crop are stripped, and I won't be cleaning off dirty wrappers later on.

It poured rain and thundered and lightning late last night after I had cleaned up, and it's been raining steadily all day. Way more rain than was forecast, so I was even gladder of my decision. I hope the later garlics enjoyed it and are not being devoured by miscellaneous pests.

[GrowingCoastal]

Beautiful and nicely done !

[JRinPA]

Too clean, I don't like it!

Mine are still hanging from early July, with 50-odd spring planted bulbs added mid July. That late March planting didn't turn out too badly...it was only a very small 2x2 or so plot, deep forked, raised compost hill, leftover small cloves, planted with 3-4" spacing just to fill a hole. I got back maybe 25 1.5"-2", and the rest bigger than an inch. Some of the cloves I put in were really quite small because I FOUND bulbs from the seed stock on the ground there in May while weeding. Doh, I THOUGHT I had bigger ones along that day!

Garlic is pretty neat, and I'm loving having a nice supply for canning.

[bower]

Originally Posted by JRinPA

Too clean, I don't like it!

Mine are still hanging from early July, with 50-odd spring planted bulbs added mid July. That late March planting didn't turn out too badly...it was only a very small 2x2 or so plot, deep forked, raised compost hill, leftover small cloves, planted with 3-4" spacing just to fill a hole. I got back maybe 25 1.5"-2", and the rest bigger than an inch. Some of the cloves I put in were really quite small because I FOUND bulbs from the seed stock on the ground there in May while weeding. Doh, I THOUGHT I had bigger ones along that day!

Garlic is pretty neat, and I'm loving having a nice supply for canning.

Too clean, yes... and bulb size also diminishes as you remove those wrappers. My biggest was Music, only about 2 3/4 inches. All the main crop porcelains were 2 inches +, and that is big enough for me. Not as big as last year but I won't complain, as long as I'm not losing more than a handful of cloves to damages.
My Mom actually prefers the small porcelain bulbs. She likes garlic but is not allowed to consume really large amounts. She was delighted with the two year old Music last year, so I planted more than I need to grow up seed, for her to enjoy.

[svalli]

Looks good bower! When you get good quality harvest, the size does not matter.

I like to clean the bulbs before drying because it is much easier then and I can check the bulbs for possible onion maggots. I left some of the first ones to dry with soil on the wrappers and it was a lot of work to clean them when dry.

Sari