Northern Hemisphere Garlic Ranchers/2022 Crop

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

After much procrastination (Football Season, other bountiful harvesting, tree planting/trimming, Elephant Ear/Canna Lily lifting, annual-perennial foliage removal, etc.) I finally graded, separated, and planted 373 cloves this afternoon.

Late by my/these parts' standards (usually in by mid-October), but in nonetheless, and a HUGE LOAD off my mind!

Now? Time to...um...replenish my fluids ahead of my WESconsin Badger Cager's season non-conference opener against the St. Francis Brooklyn Terriers.

Others?

The Gotch

[Glitch]

I'm still procrastinating on some garden tasks. Good on you for getting so many planted! I did mine a couple of weeks ago and they all sprouted! What varieties are you growing? Couldn't tell ya how many I planted. I wrote it down somewhere. My guess is 100.

[bower]

I have to map mine carefully because there are 15 different varieties I'm keeping track of. So I know I planted 323 exactly. Plus the 4 rounds I planted in spring and left to overwinter again. 327 and 17 varieties all told.

This fall I had a bunch of small bulbs left over from last year, that were still good after the new crop was cured and replanted! So I split em and put them in the dehydrator, and my my it is lovely to have home made garlic powder too.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@Glitch;

All Hard Neck, the original bulbs came from my Master Gardener Cousin-in-Law who used to raise Seed Garlic for WESconsin's own Jung's Garden Center.

2021 was far-n-away our best crop yet; it produced beau coup six (6) and five (5) clove bulbs (some had nine [9]!). Oddly enough, and for whatever reason, the 2020 crop overproduced three (3) and two (2) clove bulbs, requiring we set aside most of the yield in order to seed the following year, which, odder still, was BANNER!

Glass half empty?

It left us short before the 2021 harvest.

Not the case this year; just hoping it'll see us through til next mid-July...without sprouting...!

Kudos for your timely effort which resulted in yours breaking surface! It's been years since we've seen sprouts in the fall, and I'm painfully reminded of the reason why......

Garlic is a GREAT LESSON in delayed gratification!

The Gotch

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@Bower;

Fifteen (15) varieties??? Oy! And here I thought confessing my procrastination left me feeling badly enough already....

When do you harvest?

I have a Sister in Leitches Creek Nova Scotia.

The Gotch

[wykvlvr]

Does shoving some bulbils from the garlic I grew this year into a planter count? Sadly I don't even remember what variety of garlic it was...

[bower]

@Cornelius_Gotchberg our harvest date varies a lot, depending on the season. On average it would be mid august, with two weeks between the early scapers and the late ones. We plant mid October like you do. There are never any sprouts above ground in the fall afaik. Nothing through the mulch, for sure.

[Tormahto]

After much procrastination (Football Season, other bountiful harvesting, tree planting/trimming, Elephant Ear/Canna Lily lifting, annual-perennial foliage removal, etc.) I finally graded, separated, and planted 373 cloves this afternoon.

Late by my/these parts' standards (usually in by mid-October), but in nonetheless, and a HUGE LOAD off my mind!

Now? Time to...um...replenish my fluids ahead of my WESconsin Badger Cager's season non-conference opener against the St. Francis Brooklyn Terriers.

Others?

The Gotch

Unranked to start the season, there's no place to go but upward.

At least you ranked your garlic. But what team (variety) are they?

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@Tormato; graded is the term I use for creaming the bulbs, and selecting (in a many are called, few are chosen manner) what I believe to be the best prospects to further the...um...species.

And they're all hard neck.

The Gotch

[bower]

I hear you there on the pickin of the cloves to plant. Still have a pile of cracked garlic on the table to use ASAP.
If you had an off year with a lot of 2 and 3 clove bulbs, those are likely either a porcelain or a marbled purple stripe. I've seen the same thing happen fairly often, and it sure does increase the number of bulbs you have to plant back. If they usually have 4-6 big cloves, that's typical of P and MPS as well.
Rocamboles will regularly produce 8-9 + cloves in a normal sized bulb. I stopped growing Spanish Roja after a string of bad years, and yes that last year there were some bulbs reduced to fewer cloves - not few enough to be large enough for planting though. You may have several different types there, if some are making 9 cloves and the others are 5-6.
Purple Stripes and Glazers have 9-12 cloves in a bulb. It's shocking to compare how few bulbs are needed to replant the same amount, vs the porcelains at the other extreme, mostly 4 cloves to a bulb for me. Planting back the best 1/4 of the crop is tough! But everybody loves Porcelain for those huge cloves. Me included. So easy to grab the big one and grate it on a rasp. Yum.
One good thing about P and MPS, it's easy to get them back to normal size bulbs, because the 2-3 cloves in a reduced bulb are still huge.
But anyone would love the PS and G, for the economy of planting.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@Bower; all my stock comes from what I raise and I don't know any other variety would get in the mix.

There've always been some bulbs with purple tintage, with some of the cloves are gargantuan. I pressed nearly all of the...er...numerically gifted cloves, and many of the jumbos, into next year's crop.

The niners, and many of the other gifted bulbs, came from a small area (50-56 cloves) in which I recently started planting garlic. It faces due east (up against our garage/foundation) and gets intense morning (both direct and reflected) sun from ~ 07:00 a.m. to ~ 02:30 p.m. CDT.

Might just be dumb luck, but results are results, and that area is planted again.

The Gotch

[bower]

Well, I will guess, if this is all the same variety, it is a rocombole or a marbled purple stripe.
They sound like a 'gifted' lot, any way you cut it.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

This here's one of them there JUMBO cloves next to a Silver Dollar; as big/bigger than some whole bulbs.



The Gotch

[Tormahto]

German White/German Extra Hardy is like that. Sometimes only 2 or 3 huge cloves on a bulb. When cooking with garlic, I like cleaning one clove. After that, the fingers get too sticky to mess with any more. I never found a garlic press large enough for them.

[mama_lor]

Has anyone seen garlics with over 50 cloves in one bulb? What kind of type is it? I bought some egyptian garlic in store, they come in packs of three bulbs, the bigger bulb was big, maybe 100g, and had some of the tiniest cloves I've seen, packed one over the other, and a somewhat fusiform shape, with tiny root end which is unusual. I think it didn't have a scape.

This year I had to renounce Germidour, great tasting garlic, but the yield just isn't there, starts well and then just splits at any inconvenience. Am left with just Messidrome and a very early unknown hardneck with purple wrappers (1 month earlier than germidour). Not as big as messidrome, but the cloves are big (and few).

[GoDawgs]

Before I started growing garlic, multiple small cloves in most bulbs from the grocery were a pain in the butt when preparing them for cooking use. It's the main reason I started growing my own. No problem now!

[bower]

Small bulbs with small cloves here keep getting shuffled to the back of the bus, until they're all that's left at the end of the season.
It took me two hours to fill two trays of the dehydrator with cloves peeled and cut in half. Made a packet of garlic powder you'd pay $3 for in the supermarket - except way better tasting, of course! As long as I can do the job while watching TV, I'll look the other way on the economics of it.
Actually it's such a treat, I may just do another batch of the fresh bulbs that are so small they won't get used, and give my folks some powder in the christmas package. Labors of love...

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@Bower; GREAT idea to render late season stragglers into powder!

And a hearty thanks to all y'all; glad I started this thread, from which a wealth of information has ensued.

The Gotch

[Tormahto]

Small bulbs with small cloves here keep getting shuffled to the back of the bus, until they're all that's left at the end of the season.
It took me two hours to fill two trays of the dehydrator with cloves peeled and cut in half. Made a packet of garlic powder you'd pay $3 for in the supermarket - except way better tasting, of course! As long as I can do the job while watching TV, I'll look the other way on the economics of it.
Actually it's such a treat, I may just do another batch of the fresh bulbs that are so small they won't get used, and give my folks some powder in the christmas package. Labors of love...

I'm curious about the price/quantity of powdered garlic, way up there in the boondocks. Here, 24 oz/680 g goes for $5.99 (US), up $1 from a month ago (thanks to Brandon ).

[Julianna]

I ordered a sampler of garlic last year and only one variety worked. Even better is that I am not exactly sure which one it was. I thought to myself that was annoying, but I would save some heads and replant. Then my husband found my stash and used 99% of it. :/ so I got excited when I saw a local farm was selling garlic heads from their crop. I bought 4. I get them.on Friday with the rest of my order which is mostly potatoes I plan on replanting.