Garlic Weight.

[Durgan]

Looking on the internet about garlic clove weight, it seems cloves are around 1 to 6 grams. This obviously is not true. I have been weighing most of my garlic as I use it and always get form 20 to 50 gram per clove, probably an average of about 30 grams.

http://www.durgan.org/2015/August%20...%20Clove/HTML/ 8 August 2015 Garlic Clove
This is my typical garlic clove.At the garlic festivals I have not encountered better. This is hard neck and the name is not known. I select the best bulbs for seed each year, but also am growing bulbils now for seed. It has a strong biting, garlic flavor, meaning it is not pleasant to eat raw, since it burns somewhat.The clove skin is slightly colored purple near the base, but the clove is perfectly white after the skin is removed.The largest clove is 31 grams and the total bulb weight is 117 grams.

[svalli]

Most commercial garlic varieties are softenecks, which tend to have over 10 cloves per head, so the cloves are smaller than in the varieties which have 4-6 cloves. Size of the head varies a lot too between varieties and growing conditions. It is exactly same as with tomatoes and other vegetables. The supermarket tomato here has average weight between 50-100g, but I grow a lot of varieties, which are much smaller or much bigger.

I think that the average weight of the produce is important factor when writing recipes. Quite many recipes list the produce in counts an not as weight. If I make pasta sauce using my Siberian origin garlic with 20g cloves and the big beefsteak tomatoes, I need to adjust the recipe for the size of my produce. I usually use the recipes only as source for ideas, so adjusting the amount based on my own taste buds is not a problem, but some learning and novice cooks may follow the recipe literally and may get into trouble, if the produce is not in the typical size.

The first garlic variety, which I started to grow is an unknown Siberian marbled purple stripe garlic. It has usually just 4 cloves, but quite many have just two huge ones. I use the biggest 4 and 5 clove heads as seedstock. The ones with 2-3 cloves are eaten, because I want as many uniform size cloves to plant as possible. This is very hardy garlic and it is the one I plant most, but with so few cloves over 25% crop has to be saved as seedstock.
These photos are taken when I starter cracking the cured heads for autumn planting, so this is not the harvest weight.

Sari

[meganp]

Nice looking garlic Sari. The clove skins show the characteristic thin outer clove skin. Have you tried to increase your stock of this variety by growing out the bulbils? I find they size up very readily and usually replant the two cloved rounds and bulbs. If one of the two cloves are very small, i will only plant the larger clove, and sometimes I miss the doubles because the cloves are not so well separated to be obvious - will have to take some photos to show you what I mean. Weighed some of the larger rounds and measured with the calipher - 44g and same diameter 4.4. Will photograph them on a sheet of graph paper for scale.

[PhilaGardener]

Great looking garlic, everyone!

[bower]

+1.. lovely big garlic. Never thought of weighing the cloves, but the biggest porcelain clove I have left is only 16 g (yes I had to run and weigh one! ) and that is still a respectable size for me to work with. I don't like peeling little cloves.
I started some marbled purple stripe bulbils last year and was very impressed with the size of rounds I got (but doubt it was anywhere close to 44 g... WOW!). But it gave me high hopes for full sized garlic in 2 or 3 years. Finding varieties that size up quick is important to me. Not having the same luck with (non-marbled) purple stripe (Chesnok Red and Persian Star) which are late season harvest for us and ended up producing divided bulbs with really small cloves in the second year.

[Zeedman]

Persian Star has smaller bulbs than most of my other hard neck varieties, and consistently has many small, flattened cloves. On the plus side, it has been very reliable for me under a wide range of conditions... and because of the numerous cloves, less needs to be set aside for planting.

I prefer the marbled purple stripe varieties though (such as Estonian Red, and Krasnodar Red) for their heavier bulbs, and larger cloves. The porcelain varieties tend to have some of the largest cloves, such as those in the OP.

[KarenO]

I purchased recently some locally grown garlic at a market to eat but also bought extra so I would have some for planting. I am new to growing garlic and I don't know the names of these except I was told it is "heirloom Russian garlic"
It is incredible, huge spicy strong Cloves (too strong to eat raw) but amazing for cooking. Obviously it's hard necked and a Few are starting to sprout.
I want to plant it now, my ground is cold but not frozen and things should warm up soonish here. What advice do you have for me?
I can't weigh the cloves but they are easily an oz each or more
karenO

[svalli]

Karen, Those garlic heads look great. If the ground is not frozen, I would go ahead and plant those right away. These would have been done better autumn planted, but if the garlic was stored in cool location or if the ground does not warm too quickly they could still grow to normal multi cloved garlic. And if they will not split you'll get huge single clove garlic, which is not bad either.

Sari

[meganp]

Karen, the scapes appear to be hollow - could it be a turban variety? Seems to be a very short dormancy for locally grown.

[svalli]

It could be that those have been kept in cool storage like many commercial places keep them. Then when those are brought to room temperature, they start sprouting quickly.

[KarenO]

Since I bought it about a month ago They have been in my unheated garage. Getting warmer in there now. I don't know how it was stored before I got it but it came from a small time farmer
Thank you for your help, I will plant it asap

[henry]

Spring planting should work fine at the coast you have a long growing season there.

[meganp]

Originally Posted by bower

+1..
I started some marbled purple stripe bulbils last year and was very impressed with the size of rounds I got (but doubt it was anywhere close to 44 g... WOW!).

Bower, I exaggerated, the rounds were only 42g posted photos in Sari's Solo garlic thread. The biggest rounds were from an unknown turban variety.

[mayax68]

My garlics. German and Polish.

[svalli]

Maya, Your garlic looks great and that photo is so cool that I would like to print, frame and hang it on my kitchen.

Sari