Zach's 2016 Garden

[bower]

Thanks, Zach. I'm going to wait and see what the harvest is like and make sure I have enough space prepared to rotate all the garlics to a good spot. Last year it was too shady so I have another bed under construction - which I need to finish up lasagna style very soon or it won't be in good shape to plant. And I have more space to work with - an old vegetable garden which is a sunny spot all gone to weeds (oregano!). But that will need a lot of work and amendments too to make it useful. Last fall I was madly building beds to put garlic in. The rounds got planted last and I think I lost so many because I wasn't ready to plant them when I should.
My scapes are just starting now so looks like harvest will be in August. I'm going to be collecting some bulbils too and maybe have something you'd like to try. So far Argentina and Music have scapes - those are the porcelains - Spanish Roja has none yet, and the Persian Star rounds and Chesnok haven't yet either. We're way behind you!

[Kazedwards]

Thanks, Bower but I already don't have enough room for what I have now. Plus I have 2 more varieties coming this fall from a trade arranged in the spring.


-Zach

[Kazedwards]

I cut the garlic scapes and put them in water today. I garlic I harvested and is now curing. I'm very happy with the size of the bulbs.
Here's the scapes and a close up of the flowers.


And here is my garlic haul.



These two are my largest


This is the average



-Zach

[Salsacharley]

Superb garlic bulbs! Very well done! Very nice flowers, too!

[bower]

Excellent garlic! Zach I hope you will post some pics of your garlic seed process. The flowers look beautiful - so many flowers. Did you remove the bulbils already? Mine weren't nearly as nice after having their pelt plucked.

[Kazedwards]

Thank you both. I start removing bulbils once the scapes open. I tend to do a few a day and this year was not much different. Normally I would leave them on the plant until they dry down in August but this year I decided to try something new. I had just removed the bulbils from the last half of the plants when I cut them and put them in water. The heat has been hard on them too. I have had a lot of wasps and bees on them this year so they got pollinated well. I took a bit longer than I normally would to remove the bulbils this year but the flowers seem to have done fine. The flowers are swelling so I have a good chance of getting seed. I will put the umbels in a paper bag to dry in a few weeks. They take a long time to dry down so I won't know how successful I was until around Thanksgiving.

[Gardeneer]

I grew garlic few times in the past. I used to cut the scapes early when they were tender, to use for cooking. So never experimented growing from balbils. What will you get when you plant balbils ?

[Kazedwards]

Originally Posted by Gardeneer

I grew garlic few times in the past. I used to cut the scapes early when they were tender, to use for cooking. So never experimented growing from balbils. What will you get when you plant balbils ?

Depending on the type a bulbil will grow in to a full bulb in 1-3 years. Some garlics have hundreds of tiny bulbils that take three years. Others such as German Brown have bulbils close to an inch wide. They will make small bulbs the first year.

Garlic is one of the easiest things I have grown. Just plant it in the fall and forget about it. Maybe weed it a few times in the spring and dig it up early summer. Very hardy plants.


-Zach