Garlic Is In

[bjbebs]

Just dug this years garlic. Have had a good stretch of dry weather with temps in the 90's. Could have gone another 5 days but didn't want to risk a pop up shower. The garlic goes on wire racks and dries from the bottom up. After about 2 weeks, garlic is cleaned and goes into storage to cure.

I will start on my big crop today and hopefully wrap it up by Thursday. Ground will be tilled and 2 crops of buckwheat will go in before horse manure is applied.

After eating year old cloves, fresh sure taste good.

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[brownrexx]

Those are nice looking heads [mention]bjbebs[/mention] I harvested mine yesterday but I only grow 20 heads. I allow mine to dry for several weeks on a wire rack in my shed out of the sun.

Garlic 2020 by Brownrexx, on Flickr

[WoodSprite]

Those are some good looking garlic! I harvested mine on July 4. I put them on bread trays to cure in the shade on my porch. I need to put blocks of wood under the trays to raise them for better air circulation. I'll do that today.

I grew two kinds that someone gave me to eat. I liked the few cloves so much that I grew the rest of the bulbs then planted that harvest again. This year I'll be able to enjoy eating more of them. The other two kinds are Siberian (lower left) and German White Stiffneck (lower right).

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[bower]

bjbebs, those are enormous!!
I got some horse manure to dig into my old vegetable garden, which I hope to get back into service for garlic this fall.
How lucky are you guys to harvest garlic when it's warm and dry enough to dry them down outdoors.

[pepperhead212]

Great garlic [mention]bjbebs[/mention]! May I ask what variety that is?

I have possible TSs starting at 3 PM today, so I may be digging up the end of mine today. I'll be watching the radar...

[Paquebot]

Mine came out of the ground yesterday, somewhere over 100. Mine were BULBS, not HEADS!!! Spent 24 hours on screens in the shade. Thunderstorm came through this aft and garlic went into the shed. All were Martin's and some 3" but most 2" to 2½". They missed some important rains in May or would have been a bigger average.

After growing them for 37 years, still had to experiment with and without scapes. I never have found a difference in bulb size before and the same true this year. This was a true test with scapes removed in no particular order in the patch. Bulb size was not different and leaves on those with the scapes were much greener as if still growing.

Martin

[bjbebs]

Pepper, I have no idea on what variety this might be. I've been growing it for 30 plus years and have grown nothing else. Last years crop started to sprout a few weeks back but still quite usable. I just gave all that's left to a friend. He eats it by the handful, hot core and all.

[ponyexpress]

Gee [mention]bjbebs[/mention] , that garlic is ginormous. My friend has garlic that is similar in size. But his started sprouting/browning a couple of months ago. Was almost all of the garlic that size? Would you be willing to sell me 1-2 of those bulbs? I would like to try them out. Or we could do a swap. I have about 12 different varieties that I'm growing. Will have a full report on the quality/size of my crop in 2-3 weeks.

What exactly is your horse manure recipe? Do you just sprinkle a layer on top of the garlic at planting time? Last year, I dug up and area and filled it with composted horse manure. It was probably about 6" deep. I planted the cloves. But the garlic that I grew were smaller and a bit more sickly. There were more yellow leaves right from the start. So I don't plan to repeat that experiment again.

[Texgal]

Curious why you cover with cardboard and then tarp? Those are gorgeous, well done!

[ponyexpress]

[mention]WoodSprite[/mention] where do you get those bread trays? That's a nifty idea. I use bulb crates that I got from a farmer friend who gets them from a greenhouse that deals with imported bulbs from the Netherlands.

I'm planning to build a few 10x4 drying screens that I can stack using short pieces of electrical conduit. That is, build the wood frame using 2x4 wood and then staple hardware cloth on top.

[Paquebot]

When We Grow Garlic was operating, horse manure was the only fertilizer used. Hard to say exactly how much but it was plowed under as deep as possible with moldboard plow. That is the key to happy garlic. Stop to think its growth from planting to harvest. You plant the clove just below the soil surface. Then you find the bulb 6" deep when mature. Where are the roots on that bulb? They are below the 6" level. That's where the nutrients must be for best results.

A good garlic bed should be at least 12" deep. Not impossible if just a few dozen plants nor even 125 like I planted last fall. What is needed is a 16" trenching spade. Spread adequate manure, compost, or fertilizer and till that into the first 6" to 8" depth. Everything must be dry. Step the spade straight down to its maximum and pull back about 45º. That will raise the soil ahead of the spade and the tilled dry soil will fill in the void. That's the cheapest way rather than buying a broadfork for $200+.

Remember the key to getting big garlic is to put their food where they can find it.

Martin

[bjbebs]

Paque, I'm out at the market garlic now. I use a tractor mount ripper that has been modified to pop the bulbs out. Will have everything on racks by the end of the day. Well over 700 lbs. is a good guess. This is dry down weight, not wet.

I run a deep ripper through the field to relieve compaction. Buckwheat is broadcast and lightly drug in with a mat. Tilled in 40 days and repeated. Several tons of manure is ripped in and left rough about the end of October. On top of this goes aged wood chips. This field will be planted in garlic 10/2021. This years seed will go into a field that was prepared like this after both grain rye and buckwheat plantings.

I plant my cloves much deeper than you do Paque, bottom of clove is about 5" deep. Takes a bit longed to pop but I think it handles dry conditions better. Our June was very dry but the crop held up just fine. I've always thought the crop is made in April-May and June is plump up time.

Two local farm boys help with the harvest. All they ask is for is hunting rights during bow season. 95 degrees and not a breath of wind. We will polish off an 8 gallon container of ice water. Break is over , back to it.

[rxkeith]

i am about a month behind you all.

scapes are about ready to be snapped off.
i use 40 lb bags of composted chicken manure when planting my garlic in the fall.
i furrow a trench about 6 inches deep or so, fill it about half way with the chicken
manure, put in the cloves, and cover. i haven't been using a mulch over winter on
account of the several feet of white mulch that falls from the sky, and sticks around
until april.
horse manure is a good addition, and something i need to talk to my neighbor about.
he has horses, and a tractor with a bucket. i have a truck. poop happens every day.

i planted less than 200 cloves a couple years ago, and it wasn't enough. we need about
250 bulbs to last most of the year. old cloves are better than no cloves. we have been
relying on store bought the past couple months. i have about a hundred or so bulbils of
my generic german hard neck in addition to the main crop. most of them will form smaller
bulbs. we shouldn't run out of garlic this year.


keith

[bower]

You guys are killin me... I want a farm ... wahhhh!
I'm a little behind you Keith. Scapes are not ready to pluck yet, but they're out.

bjbebs, do you harvest the rye crop?
There's no doubt, your garlic loves what you're doing with the soil!

[Paquebot]

bj, if you have the equipment, you can really make garlic happy. The moldboard did the initial job right after harvest. Then it was disk and chisel plow to prep the ground for planting. (Told the farmer that he had more machinery in one unit than we had on the farm when I was younger!) Soil was 100% prairie silt which would harden in a hurry if wet. After one wet season when that was a little basal rot, mentioned that to the farmer who did the tilling. Told me that he had a subsoiler that would break it up over 3' deep. When he went through with that it looked like we had been growing on top of blacktop!

Martin

[WoodSprite]

@WoodSprite where do you get those bread trays? That's a nifty idea. I use bulb crates that I got from a farmer friend who gets them from a greenhouse that deals with imported bulbs from the Netherlands.

I'm planning to build a few 10x4 drying screens that I can stack using short pieces of electrical conduit. That is, build the wood frame using 2x4 wood and then staple hardware cloth on top.

[mention]ponyexpress[/mention] - I had been using a wood frame with hardware cloth that my husband made to screen compost. Then I found these bread racks strewn across the ground near a dumpster behind Goodwill so I took them. They are so much easier to move due to their sturdiness and handles. I use them to cure my onions, too, and to put my flats on when hardening off plants to keep them off of the ground.

It's been so humid here that I'll probably move my garlic to my basement or dining room table (that never gets used for eating).

[mention]bjbebs[/mention] - Sorry. I thought this was a thread for showing our garlic harvests. Didn't mean to butt in. You have some might fine looking garlic.

[Paquebot]

Sorite, don't apologize. Tuere are often some little comments that just don't fit anywhere else but may mean the difference between a good or fair harvest. After 37 years of growing garlic, I may have become complacent in some of my instructions from planting-to-planting. Always something to remind me that it's not like planting a tomato seed.

Martin

[bjbebs]

Hey Wood, you didn't butt in. You added a good comment on garlic. This thread would be dead if not for you. Thanks.

Got the market garlic on racks covered with roofing tin. Just getting dark and got the equipment put away and the skies opened up. I hung around to make sure the crop was not getting wet. 8/10's of an inch in twenty minutes. Just in time for the corn and beans. Farmers were worried as corn is just beginning to tassel.

Bower, rye is tilled in when it gets about 8-10" and starts to fall over. It's my best green manure crop. A heavy dew will get the seed up, grows quick and is deep rooted.