karstopography wrote: ↑Sat Mar 02, 2024 8:24 amDoes this garlic you planted right at the end of October come up in the fall at all or is March the first time you’ve seen it since you planted the cloves?

Infrequently you's get some fall sprouting, matterafact some of the 2023 crop came up in November 2022. Garlic in these here parts seem to mirror a human nine month gestation, planting to harvest, spectrum.

Folks down your way do a Winter Mimic Gimmick with Daffodil/Jonquil/Narcissus, Tulip, & Hyacinth bulbs, don't they?

The Gotch

Cornelius_Gotchberg wrote: ↑Sat Mar 02, 2024 10:54 am

karstopography wrote: ↑Sat Mar 02, 2024 8:24 amDoes this garlic you planted right at the end of October come up in the fall at all or is March the first time you’ve seen it since you planted the cloves?

Infrequently you's get some fall sprouting, matterafact some of the 2023 crop came up in November 2022. Garlic in these here parts seem to mirror a human nine month gestation, planting to harvest, spectrum.

Folks down your way do a Winter Mimic Gimmick with Daffodil/Jonquil/Narcissus, Tulip, & Hyacinth bulbs, don't they?

The Gotch

Yes, and hard necked garlic.

Wet again... I went over to transplant some parsnips to grow flowers, ladybugs, and seed this summer. That garlic looks happy. Covered with solid black plastic mulch and weighted with wood chips worked pretty well to keep the weeds down and minimize the freeze cycles on that long bed. I'm going to have a lot of garlic, though...I need to figure a better way to cure this year.

edited to add captions

Upper Garlic bed; little ahead of schedule in these here parts, 2.0: The Gotch

My garlic never did die back completely. Hopefully that won't affect clove size! This picture is from February 20. I added a few small amendments, then recovered.

The Ides of March is usually the 1st Garlic sighting in Jardín del Gotch, this year they're up 3-5"/7.6-12.7 cms: The Gotch

This is Iberian Wight, which I have been saving seed from for since 2017. It's very early, usually ready to harvest by the 1st week of June, so I can plant tomatoes/sweetcorn/squash after it.
This is Solent Wight, a very long storing but later harvesting variety. It's interplanted between rows of strawberries (of which 4 died during a wet winter ). This interplant seems to work really well, the strawberry leaves shade the soil and the garlic appears to appreciate the extra moisture. I also have about 40 Messidrome planted all around the back of the borders of the greenhouse.

I assume Messidrome is another softneck like Messidor? IDK what they are doing with those names.
I read somewhere that strawberries were a good rotation for garlic ie growing strawberries in the off year to rotate your beds, and I'm trying that this year. Never heard about interplanting them... @rossomendblot do you plant the strawberries in fall as well? Is there not a competition for nutrients issue, as I've always read to keep garlic well weeded and spaced to get a good harvest?

Mar 16th they are shaping up. I still can't believe I didn't 2023 bulbils to directly compare at that time. 320!?
98 holes in that black tarp, 7 and 6 staggered through 15 total rows. I thought there were more, but I guess I used to plant a row outside this piece of black mulch since it was a 5 foot wide bed that I made it for and the woven is only 4 ft. Three blank spots scattered down the middle, I probably couldn't reach or couldn't see, it is dark in December.
The inner row with 47 narrowed the pathway a little and the weeds need to get checked there.
The outer row with 67 showing was first and had smaller stuff planted closer. I was shooting for about 5" spacing with the rest, but 59 got packed into one row somehow.

I'm thinking of adding leaf mulch on that long row to try to keep down the weeds in that long row.

I think planting through a custom black mulch like that 98 hole sheet is probably the way to go for me. Perhaps for onions as well. My generic spacing for most of my black mulch is about 12" in row and 20" between the two rows. Last year it seemed like some wasted space. They were admittedly nice big bulbs, but I have lost quite a few though in storage.

bower wrote: ↑Sat Mar 16, 2024 5:11 pm I assume Messidrome is another softneck like Messidor? IDK what they are doing with those names.
I read somewhere that strawberries were a good rotation for garlic ie growing strawberries in the off year to rotate your beds, and I'm trying that this year. Never heard about interplanting them... @rossomendblot do you plant the strawberries in fall as well? Is there not a competition for nutrients issue, as I've always read to keep garlic well weeded and spaced to get a good harvest?

Yeah, it's a softneck, I've never grown any hardneck.

The strawberries in the back half of the bed have been there for a year now. I had other varieties in there the year before which didn't impress me much with flavour or fruit size. The plants in the near half have only been in there since October. I keep the plants in the same bed for 3 years before moving to a new bed with new plants.

The soil is quite fertile since I mulch heavily with grass clippings during the summer, and add a lot of compost and coffee grounds in the autumn. I also feed the garlic with extra potassium in April. The combination just seems to work, it surprised me too. Maybe it's because strawberries have relatively shallow root systems, whereas the garlic goes down deeper? I'm glad it works because it means the late garlic doesn't hog a whole bed until late July, by which time it would be too late to plant a lot of summer crops.

I really like the sound of that @rossomendblot .

Looking at Haifa's suggestions for crop fertilisation requirements, a bed of garlic and strawberry combined requires a little bit more nitrogen and phosphorous, but less potassium, than a bed of only tomatoes. So, I think if the nutrient and moisture levels in the soil are high enough, the interplant should work fine.

Around here we plant garlic in the fall. Mine went in Oct 12. In the photo below there's Lorz Italian on the left and on the right is half a row of Siberian and half Russian Inferno. I wasn't going to keep those last two going but the small quantity of planting stock I had was too nice not to plant. So in the ground they went.


This year I've added Polish White, another softneck artichoke type that has large cloves without all those bothersome little cloves in the middle. What I ordered was enough for one good row in a different bed so what grows this year will all be replanted this October to bump up quantities.

And who knows... if the Siberian and Russian Inferno make really nice bulbs I just might keep them around. Why is it so hard to stop growing some things?

GoDawgs wrote: ↑Sun Mar 17, 2024 3:08 pm And who knows... if the Siberian and Russian Inferno make really nice bulbs I just might keep them around. Why is it so hard to stop growing some things?

I know what you mean. For a while I had over 30 varieties and it was too much work to keep them separate. Softnecks do not grow well here, so I did stop growing them. I also culled all varieties which are easily available here in garden centers or by ordering online. Then I quit some hardnecks, which did not grow well. I have now about 20 varieties and there are still couple which I have been planning to stop planting. But every fall I still decide to give them another try.

GoDawgs wrote: ↑Sun Mar 17, 2024 3:08 pm
And who knows... if the Siberian and Russian Inferno make really nice bulbs I just might keep them around. Why is it so hard to stop growing some things?

Because gardening is cheap therapy and we get tomatoes. And other stuff. And with green thumbs, growing stuff is a need, not a want.

I have scrapes! Looks like several of these making an appearance.

Guess I better figure out how to cook them. Saw something with pasta that looked tasty.

Scapes, right? Thought I learned the term as scrapes, but I have heard and read it both ways, and got a look from a neighbor a few years back when I said scrapes. Been saying scapes since. They eSCAPE the plant but then I SCRAPE them off, so, I dunno...

I pick them but rarely use them...I think some people made pesto with some of mine last year.

@JRinPA you are correct, scapes looks like the right term.

https://www.bonappetit.com/test-kitchen ... lic-scapes

These guys mention scrambled eggs and scapes. I’m in.

Everyone in my family LOVES the scape harvest.

I tried the pesto but found it a bit meh. I prefer the stronger flavor of clove garlic in pesto, along with basil or another flavor green.
One favorite use is to cut them in 1/2 to 1 inch pieces and use in stirfry the way you would use a green bean, just cooked until bright.
Another favorite is to dice them fine and use them raw in potato salad... yum.
I haven't been too pleased with freezing them, but they literally keep for months in the crisper of your fridge.

Yeah they keep a long time. I guess I've used them as garlic, but, I always have plenty of last year's garlic so...

It is pouring here. When I went for spinach, the garlic looked very satisfied with the cold rain. The ground was pretty well cracked from the March winds that were actually on time for once.