garlic 2020

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JRinPA
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Re: garlic 2020

#21

Post: # 25567Unread post JRinPA
Wed Jul 15, 2020 1:17 am

The last four here were in the back right corner that I missed. A bit bigger. 1/1 large bulb with scape pulled. 1/3 large with scape intact. That is more of a worked area compared to the center of this bed. Also may have gotten water from the broccoli drip tape or splash from cans.
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JRinPA
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Re: garlic 2020

#22

Post: # 25568Unread post JRinPA
Wed Jul 15, 2020 1:20 am

Thoughts/Conclusions
It might be safe to say that overall, nutrition goes first to scape and bulbil formation, and then bulb size. If the ground is full of nutrition, then scape removal won't affect the bulb size too much.

Assuming good nutrition, full sun and water are more important to bulb size than scape removal. EDIT: also, room to stretch and see low angle sun. All my biggest has been west side open to the evening sun.

Breaking scapes seems to have led to a lot of green wrapper loss by mid-July, but an earlier harvest may not have reflected that. I know it was hot and dry when I broke scapes, and water practically welled out the top.

The only garlic bed I have left to pick is the remainder of the backyard raised bed. I also have some May planted garlic set as companion crops to keep evil bugs away from the summer squash and pepper/eggplant bed. I'm not expecting anything from them, though I admit some are quite think and "stalky".

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Re: garlic 2020

#23

Post: # 25810Unread post brownrexx
Fri Jul 17, 2020 8:04 am

I always cut off my scapes when they appear.

I trimmed my garlic bulbs yesterday after curing outdoors for 2 weeks. I will allow them to cure for another week indoors in my pantry before storing them in the cool basement.

ImageGarlic 2020 by Brownrexx, on Flickr

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Re: garlic 2020

#24

Post: # 25825Unread post ponyexpress
Fri Jul 17, 2020 10:46 am

How do you get your bulbs looking so clean? Peel the outer layer? Hosed them off? I'm referring to [mention]JRinPA[/mention] pictures on the first page.

I pull (not cut) my scapes when they appear. Currently have them on a drying rack before I trim and clean the bulbs.

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Re: garlic 2020

#25

Post: # 25856Unread post JRinPA
Fri Jul 17, 2020 4:18 pm

I am not advising for or against it at this time, but the clean look garlic is from peeling off the bad leaves. I've never done that before. PH mentioned it on tville at some point over the last couple years. If I'm wrong someone correct me on that but that's what I seem to recall.

I'm not sure how bad it is for long term storage, removing wrappers like that. However some of it really looked bad, so I peeled some, and then I started finding those dark orange spots of fly pupae, so I ended peeling them all to get an idea how many were affected. Also it helped to see the size and condition since I wanted to compare that. I'll see how storage goes this year. Usually they start throwing green shoots for me in the springtime, mid-March, but are still edible now in July.

My typical curing/drying process is using a stiff brush, getting most of the dirt off everything, and hanging for a month or more in the basement which is probably 78-80F and 60% RH. Then I'll trim them down to a foot and trim the root hairs some and let them hang until spring. By January the basement is 55F and 40% RH. I don't take them down until the grow light goes on, then put them in a dark box. Nothing ideal, but that is the way it has been working out.

This year I skipped the brush and peeled the bad leaves, but this year was a dry spring, late harvest, heavy rains right before the harvest causing wet wrappers and dirt, and most worrisome, I noticed those fly eggs for the first time. I don't know how much damage was from the weather and extra time, and how much the flies.

I pulled the rest of the garlic from the 9x5 box bed. Maybe two days back. Really rough looking. I took pics again and will post. I'm pretty sure I'm done with that bed for garlic. Probably move a compost pile there.

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Re: garlic 2020

#26

Post: # 25859Unread post brownrexx
Fri Jul 17, 2020 4:35 pm

[mention]JRinPA[/mention] the pupae of the Alium Leaf Miner look like small grains of brown rice. Is that what you found? I found them in my onions before I decided to quit growing them. I now grow my garlic at our cabin in a county that does not have the Alium Leaf Miner yet.

Here is one garlic the year I had the Alium Leaf Miner problem. The maggots burrow into bulbs and can cause rot. It was a bad garlic year for me and the onions were a total loss.

ImageDSC01513 by Brownrexx, on Flickr


[mention]ponyexpress[/mention] For best storage you should not peel off wrappers. I harvested mine from some really dry, loose soil and just brushed the bulbs off with a soft dust brush. After curing for 2 weeks they looked pretty white as you can see in my photo above. I did not peel wrappers except for maybe a damaged one or two. Here is a pic of my bulbs as they came from the ground and after brushing off.


ImageGarlic 2020 by Brownrexx, on Flickr

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Re: garlic 2020

#27

Post: # 25860Unread post JRinPA
Fri Jul 17, 2020 4:53 pm

Was that a fresh /dead in the ground garlic or cured? The rotted one.

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Re: garlic 2020

#28

Post: # 25862Unread post brownrexx
Fri Jul 17, 2020 5:00 pm

That is how it looked coming out of the ground [mention]JRinPA[/mention]

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Re: garlic 2020

#29

Post: # 25863Unread post bower
Fri Jul 17, 2020 5:03 pm

[mention]ponyexpress[/mention] I've been stripping my garlic down to a clean wrapper at harvest time for a couple of years now. For me it is a great way to check for insect damage and minimize my losses. The only concern I had was the possibility that they would cure too quickly and therefore not store as well. This has not been the case. Right now I'm down to my last clove of porcelain with harvest about 3 weeks away, and they were all solid and good to the end 11 months or so. The PStar and Chesnok I have left are also still sound and good. So the stripped bulbs cured fine and kept very well.
OTOH PH at the ville mentioned, he had mold troubles on the bulbs which he stripped last season, and would not do it again.
It all comes down to your individual climate and your drydown and storage conditions. He had it warm and humid, and for some reason the stripped bulbs did worse than the dirty ones. I do my drying down and curing in the basement here, so it's a bit cool but relatively dry compared to an outdoor shed. I never had any mold on my garlic whether I cleaned them up early or late.
The big difference for me, it is very easy to strip the top wrapper when they are moist from the field. It's quicker for me, than waiting a week or three weeks and then trying to remove the dirty wrapper that is already dry or half dry. Or wait until fully cured and hope you can crush that loose wrapper off easily... IDK.
Henry once showed us some bulbs he had stripped in the field, iirc he said they did that because it was a rare seed so they took special care with them. It makes sense to me, because the bulb that cures with a clean wrapper already doesn't have any bugs gnawing away nor any rot around the bug bites that is going deeper....
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Re: garlic 2020

#30

Post: # 25884Unread post JRinPA
Fri Jul 17, 2020 10:07 pm

I think there were maybe two bulbs out of the ~175 so far that had brown mealiness like that, but they didn't look dried up like your pic.

I should turn on the fan downstairs, I think I usually run that the first couple weeks the garlic is hanging. Hopefully I don't get any mold. I vaguely recall reading that now, about mold, but PH's drying/curing is a lot different than mine.

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Re: garlic 2020

#31

Post: # 25902Unread post bower
Sat Jul 18, 2020 9:50 am

JR, I've never had mold when drying and curing indoors, regardless of which process I used for cleanup. Even though we don't usually have heat on at the time of year, and so it is 'relatively' humid in the house and the weather often wet and cool, but still the indoor air is still way dryer than the garlic itself. OTOH at my friend's farm there have been mold issues on several different years, where the garlic was drying down and curing in uninsulated and unheated farm buildings during rainy weather. The relative humidity inside the sheds is exactly what you have outdoors (that would be 100%!). I suspect PH had the same situation with very high humidity due to weather, and also a very big crop that has its own moisture factor in the space. Although much hotter, hese are both climates with a lot of moisture in the air at times. We did set up a fan at the farm a couple of years, out of concern for the humidity level - and also the room was basically blocked with garlic laid out on every space we could rig. I think it worked alright.
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Re: garlic 2020

#32

Post: # 26169Unread post ponyexpress
Tue Jul 21, 2020 9:46 am

Bower wrote: Fri Jul 17, 2020 5:03 pm The big difference for me, it is very easy to strip the top wrapper when they are moist from the field. It's quicker for me, than waiting a week or three weeks and then trying to remove the dirty wrapper that is already dry or half dry. Or wait until fully cured and hope you can crush that loose wrapper off easily... IDK.
This is a good point. I'm going over the bulbs now and with the dried wrappers, in some cases, you can peel it off easily. In other cases, it's stuck to the next wrapper and I'm afraid to do more and damage another layer.

After the garlic has been pulled, do people leave their green leaves on the garlic and let it turn to brown on its own? I guess the plant is drawing "some" energy from the leaves back into the bulb?

I have my garlic curing outside under a covered porch. It's been great weather here in Massachusetts for the past week or so. Not too humid.

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Re: garlic 2020

#33

Post: # 26183Unread post bower
Tue Jul 21, 2020 12:02 pm

[mention]ponyexpress[/mention] I think as a rule people keep the greens on until they dry. I keep the leaves and roots as well on until dry. The reason afaik is to slow the drying of the bulb, which does continue to draw moisture from other parts. (I even heard of one grower who said the bulbs continued to grow after hanging them in a cool shed with all their parts!) The general wisdom seems to be to slow down the drying of the bulb so that it keeps better.
I also leave about 6-8 inches of stem during the cure. I think there is still moisture in the stem to slowly cure, but the other reason is that if it's cut too short you may get pathogens entering and getting to the bulb. So keeping the stem and letting it dry down is like with the neck of your onions, for safe keeping.
The exception to the rule which I've heard of is in large commercial operations, where they had thousands of bulbs to dry and cure in their shed. The moisture content of the crop alone was enough to raise the humidity inside the shed! With such a damp environment, the greens were trimmed at harvest time, and was not supposed to affect the cure due to the humid situation. PH at the ville also tried this out for his scale-up, and was happy with the results. Humid environment there!
IDK if the bulbs that are cured this way keep just as well or not.... for me as a home gardener it's no sweat to keep the greens and follow the tradition. We do the same thing at the farm, and you've seen bjbebs doing exactly that traditional drydown with great success even on a commercial scale.
So I think the exception would only be a good choice in exceptionally moist conditions.
Granted I have never tried it and compared the two.

Glad to hear you're getting some nice dry weather for your harvest! :)
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Re: garlic 2020

#34

Post: # 26259Unread post Sue_CT
Tue Jul 21, 2020 8:21 pm

Picked up my seed garlic at the local garlic farm on Sunday. It sells so fast, I missed the nice large ones the last two years in a row because they sold out. I like to support a local farm, and I know the German White hard neck grows well around here. It is all they grow. Now I just need to cross my fingers that life and the COVID virus doesn't get in the way of gardening come fall.

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Re: garlic 2020

#35

Post: # 26310Unread post ponyexpress
Wed Jul 22, 2020 3:11 pm

Sue_CT wrote: Tue Jul 21, 2020 8:21 pm Picked up my seed garlic at the local garlic farm on Sunday. It sells so fast, I missed the nice large ones the last two years in a row because they sold out. I like to support a local farm,
I like to order local as well. But I have ordered from Filaree, Burpee, Fedco, and Maine Potato Lady because I do like to try new varieties. I'm happy that some of the varieties that I got in 2017 (Blossom & Purple Glazer) have possibly acclimated to my climate after three years. I got some really nice large bulbs. Much larger than the ones I originally got from those places.

Speaking of Burpee, the garlic I got was called "Favorite Northern Garlic Collection". It included Purple Glazer, Ajo Rojo, and Georgia Crystal. I tried growing Ajo Rojo for a few years but gave up. The bulbs were puny and did not do well. It's from the Creole family which does better in the south. It baffles me that they include this variety in the Northern Garlic collection.

Anyone have luck growing creole garlic in the north that are a good size?

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Re: garlic 2020

#36

Post: # 26324Unread post JRinPA
Wed Jul 22, 2020 5:12 pm

Georgia Crystal is another odd moniker for a northern garlic.

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Re: garlic 2020

#37

Post: # 26337Unread post ponyexpress
Wed Jul 22, 2020 7:32 pm

JRinPA wrote: Wed Jul 22, 2020 5:12 pm Georgia Crystal is another odd moniker for a northern garlic.
Indeed if you're from the US but not if you're from the USSR. Interesting that this website says Georgia Crystal is their best performer. Maybe because I got my seed from Burpee three years ago, I find Georgia Crystal is one of the worse varieties. German Extra Hardy & Music are my best performers.

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Re: garlic 2020

#38

Post: # 26395Unread post JRinPA
Thu Jul 23, 2020 3:53 pm

That makes more sense, planting wise. Tbilisi is about my latitude. But shouldn't that be called Georgian Crystal if it refers to the one in the Caucasus? Kind of the convention when it refers to a people/nation. Just in garlic you have German White, Russian Red, etc. Hmm. Georgia Jet is a sweet potato I grew last year; the people are American.

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Re: garlic 2020

#39

Post: # 26414Unread post bower
Thu Jul 23, 2020 8:06 pm

Every Northern grower that I've seen comment about creoles, says they produce small bulbs in the north.
I have one called "Lautrec" which I'm growing up from bulbils which Svalli sent me. You should ask her if they grow large or not. This is only year 2, and we did have a lot of degree days this spring which we don't always or usually get, but it does seem pretty happy and produced some decent sized rounds - there are a few bulbs forming out there too which I just took the scapes off today, same time as all the Purple Stripes (Chesnok, Persian Star, Kolkja Purple). So if it is not any later than them, it could do fine here - and produce small bulbs. ;) It certainly was winter hardy.
Not late compared to my Spanish Roja, which got crushed by the cold summer last year and are now kinda runty at best. Their scapes are just coming, last of the lot. Hate to see SR go, they smell so awesome when you harvest it's almost better than eating them. :) Lautrec smells good too! And Germidour. Yes I do love hanging garlic in the house. :lol:
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