Northern Hemisphere Garlic Ranchers/2023 Crop

[svalli]

@svalli Svalli that looks like good spacing with your black mulch. How wide is that black plastic and what is the spacing and distance between rows?

That plastic is 1 meter wide and the rows are 20 cm apart. Holes on a row are about 15-20cm distance The plastic sheet is sold for growing strawberries and comes in 20 meter roll. Usually that kind lasts me 5 seasons, before I have to make a new one.

[JRinPA]

Yeah mine is pretty spread out compared to that, 4 ft wide cloth, rows about 20" apart so a single drip tape down the middle can cover both rows, and row spacing varies from 9" to 12". I did try to "align" my garlic this year, so they would fan out east-west, but not all cooperated. It is certainly more E-W than random placement, but some twisted or shifted as they grew out.

[bower3]

This year my biggest seed was planted at 10 inch/ 25 cm row spacing and about the same within row.
Second bed was smaller seed from the large bulb types, same row spacing and 8 inch/20cm within rows.
Third bed is smaller seed from all types including the short and the late ones in the front row, these are 10 inch rows but tighter spacing within rows.
I had pretty small bulbs last year so I increased the row spacing in hopes to come away with bigger seed bulbs.

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[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

Good thing Meese (Moose plural...?) don't like munching on Garlic fronds, am I right?

The Gotch

[bower3]

Too true @Cornelius_Gotchberg . Garlic is the one crop that none of our big or small crop munchers eat at all. The only concern with garlic beds is 1) probably squirrels will dig them up when just planted - not to eat but to look at! So I mulch and then cover the beds with chicken wire for the winter. That does double duty in keeping the mulch from blowing off.
And 2) those silly meese can trample the garlic beds because they don't see that they aughta keep their toes out. The wire actually helps with that a bit too, keeps them from sinking right in. But they often leave a few tracks in early spring.
My big challenge is in finding another crop that I can grow in rotation and not turn into a feast for someone else.
I'm almost tempted to give up trying to do rotation and just fill all those beds with garlic - maybe keep a small one for house veggies.
What do you think? Do you rotate or grow garlic in the same place?

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

Failed to note that Meese havoc will manifest itself in ways other than devourment.

Our Garlic's always been in the same place, and with yesterday's >2"/>5 cms of rain and us leaving for six (days), I'll be harvesting the remainder today in order to prevent it from rotting with newly moistened soil at the wrong time.

The Gotch

[bower3]

I've done garlic in the same bed two years running only once - no problems. I just dug some new compost in before planting. Rotating every second year is a precaution but whether it really matters... well maybe it depends. If you had no pest or disease in the first year, there's no reason to worry about a buildup of what isn't already there.
I suppose the window between harvest time and planting time is also (usually!) long enough that the fine roots left in the ground after harvest would be entirely gone...

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

HARVEST DAY Morning:

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Pulled:

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Cleaned-n-Initial Drying/Curing Stage:

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Two (2) weeks earlier than last year...HUGE bulbs!

The Gotch

[JRinPA]

I picked both main rows yesterday. Scapes removed on left, intact garlic on right. Scapes intact looked rougher on top. I planted left, then right rows last December, at night, so they should tend to be smaller seed stock too since I likely selected the biggest I could feel each time.

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Complete with bulbils:

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cont.

[JRinPA]

Scapes broken off

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[JRinPA]

drying rack needs help...I already have some earlier garlic hanging. I figured some wire spanning some coolers on the carport would work, but I ran out of space pretty quick...

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[Moth1992]

Beautiful harvests!

(I harvested my first 4 bulbs and feel acomplished ha.)

I got rust in my garlics, should I rotate? Not sure how to since i only have a relatively small plot. But will try if I need to.

[rossomendblot]

Beautiful harvests!

(I harvested my first 4 bulbs and feel acomplished ha.)

I got rust in my garlics, should I rotate? Not sure how to since i only have a relatively small plot. But will try if I need to.

It's probably prudent to rotate but I'm not sure it makes much difference. My garlic gets rust every year now, despite rotation. Some varieties seem more susceptible than others. I mostly grow early varieties which don't stay in the ground past early June, which stops the rust getting too bad, and some later cropping garlic interplanted amongst the strawberries where they seem to enjoy the shaded soil. This year I found that plants in soil which dried out were much worse affected, despite being the same variety at the same spacing. Supposedly increasing potassium and reducing nitrogen can help to prevent rust, I gave my garlic beds extra potassium sulphate in early spring but can't say whether it made much difference or not.

[bower]

Excellent bulbs even with bulbils @JRinPA . Glad you got those out before it rained.

@Moth1992 if there was no rust in the area except your garlic, the thing to do would be don't compost the remains, dispose them far away etc. and don't plant the garlic in the exact same spot if/or in case rust or other trouble was soil dwelling.
When the pathogen is endemic to the place, weather conditions probably play a bigger part in whether it's a bad season or not.

[svalli]

Beautiful weather here ended and it has been raining a lot where our field is. Last Sunday was sunny, so I hurried to dig all of the garlic. The rains had caused a bit Botrytis on the stems, so it was time to harvest even Porcelains could have been in one week longer than others.

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It took me two days to get them cleaned and hanging in the garage.

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I am quite satisfied with the harvest. There were some with onion maggots in the stems, but I am so used to seeing them, that I do not get upset about it. Botrytis porri is more worrisome, because even I inspect all planted cloves, I cannot get rid of it. Varieties with thicker leaves and bigger bulbs seem to get it worst. I have separated all the ones with signs of botrytis and peeled the leaves on the stems hoping that these will dry to edible bulbs, but should not be used for planting. Maybe the spores are in the soil or coming through air, so that I cannot get rid of it even with my four year rotation cycle of the garlic and onion bed locations.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@svalli; the word clean doesn't do them there bulbs justice.

On that subject, what's your cleaning process?

The Gotch

[svalli]

On that subject, what's your cleaning process?

I rinse mud and soil of the bulbs and roots with the garden hose. After rinsing I let them drip a bit before peeling off broken peels on the bulb. I count the remaining leaves and try to have at least four leaves remaining on each plant, because that corresponds to four layers of peel on the bulb. Same time I can inspect the stems and bulbs for signs of onion maggots and diseases. It is time consuming to go through all of them, but it helps at later stages, when I can bring clean bulbs to cure and storage indoors.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

For the first time, I sprayed mine off with a focused high pressure hose nozzle in a bucket, rather than by hand with water; cut the time by 2/3s.

The Gotch

[karstopography]

Interesting, I just brushed the loose soil off my garlic and then allowed the bulbs to cure. I didn’t realize spraying the bulbs off with water under pressure was a best practice. I thought adding additional water, especially water under pressure, would encourage mold and rot, but it appears that might not be the case.

[karstopography]

https://keeneorganics.com/curing-garlic/

Keene on prepping, curing and storing garlic. Seems like there are multiple pathways.

Just brushing off the soil is one way and that’s what I did. Keene apparently doesn’t wash off their garlic if I read the instructions correctly in the link, but they report that others do this successfully.