Northern Hemisphere Garlic Ranchers/2022 Crop

[svalli]

@svalli; HeyZeus Alou! Outfreakin'standing!

How did you's get those Magnificent Monster Bulbs so clean? And those stalks look positively verdant!

I see some scapes still attached, is that your approach?

The Gotch

Thanks Gotch,

Our field has a bit of clay in it, so when I get garlic home, I rinse the bulbs and roots with garden hose. After those have dripped excess water, I peel the bulbs, so that at least four leaves remain (I had to peel totally some of the ones with maggots). This year I also trimmed the tips of the leaves, because those always break and make a mess on the garage floor.

Earlier I used to remove the scapes when those were still soft and try to get as much stem as possible. But then we had way too much to use in cooking, so now I pull only few scapes early and remove just bulbils off the others couple of weeks before harvest. It seems that later removal of the bulbils keeps the leaves green a bit longer.
I left few bulbils on each variety, so that I can grow them, if the variety needs to be renewed. I have noticed that the ones grown from bulbils seem to be more vigorous than the ones I have grown many years form cloves.

Sari

[bower]

My garlic is in and most of it already trimmed. The bulbs were quite small overall, but I have some normal sized bulbs to plant. We have plenty of smaller ones to eat of all kinds, so I'm satisfied with that. But I'm really going to focus on growing some bigger bulbs for seed this time. My space was a bit tighter than intended last season, since there was too much wireworm in the old veggie garden where I had potatoes. So I spaced them fairly tight, and perhaps they didn't get the water they needed from a dry winter with some rain but little snow. I don't think they appreciated the relentless heat either, and the high humidex! Even though the ground was fairly moist at the depth of the bulbs at harvest time, they really looked stricken and I actually let most of them go to just three or partial leaves before taking them up. So I'm thinking to plant the largest cloves of all kinds with a generous spacing in the best prepped bed I can make, especially for seed, and then use smaller cloves and normal spacing for eating purposes. I may also keep some extra bulbs for spring planting to produce rounds.
On a positive note, there was very little insect damage of any kind, maybe 1-2 percent of all bulbs with some shallow bites, so the bulbs are really nice quality and should be good keeping.
Argentina, Persian Star and Alexandra seemed to suffer the most from this hot season in producing smaller bulbs compared to others in the same group. Those that did best in maintaining bulb size were Kolkja Red Russian, Chesnok Red, and Kostyn's Red Russian. This is interesting because during our string of colder seasons I nearly gave up on Chesnok and Kostyn's finding them sulky and small. So it was nice to see they have a good season when others found it too hot. Honorable mention also goes to Lautrec, Kolkja Glazer and Kolkja Purple, which increased their size from last year and are still growing up. Did I mention they are beautiful? Pics from the basement don't do justice! The colors are sweet, and my family will be really pleased to enjoy them.

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garlic2022-biggestforseed-443.JPG

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@Bower; DAMN FINE lookin' lineup, there!

Never seen bulb roots that long. Did you's trim some off'n the other bulbs, or is that variety specific?

The Gotch

[bower]

Gotch, I just loosen and lift them with a fork before I pull them.. that's how much roots comes with. I trim the roots and the tops at the same time, when the leaves are completely done.

[svalli]

Beautiful garlic again @Bower!

I noticed you got some mighty size Tallinn bulbs in there.

[bower]

@svalli the Tallinn quickly earned its place as a favorite here by sizing up faster than any others to a jumbo bulb size. They are really nice bulbs with generous big cloves, great taste, and impressive keeping on par with my porcelains. They did get a bit smaller this season than last year, but since they were already quite large, not a problem! They still are overall bigger than others
I forgot to mention the surviving softnecks, which are still quite small. IDK if others had similar experience when growing up from softneck bulbils, or if it is just the crappy climate making it more difficult for them, that they are still far behind the hardnecks. I have just a couple of good sized cloves of Messidor to take forward, which might make close to normal bulb. Except for the slow progress sizing them up, Messidor would be nice because although it's late harvest, it's really an amazing long keeper - the smaller unplanted bulbs from previous years stayed very firm even longer than the Purple Stripes which are basically good through the next harvest time. Germidour which was all rounds last season produced one large round and some small bulbs just a bit larger than last ones. I think I will try spring as well as fall planting for Germidour and Alexandra to see if I can size up a notch with spring planting for rounds. Besides the beautiful color and smell of the Germidour, I love that they are early. I would definitely turn them into a large patch if I can, for the pleasure of that harvest always a bit earlier than the rest - and they are first through the ground every spring as well!
Feral Ziemiai, which was in the ground since the fall of 2020, is doing alright but still very small - I decided to dig and move them again. The feral Topinky came up this spring looking good but soon turned yellow and then disappeared. Maybe still there dormant, IDK. Imagine that we had such a cold drizzly and overcast spring right up to the first week of June, when even the grass didn't grow, and the garlic beds were looking fantastic compared to everything else! Then quite suddenly the highs went over 20C to 'July weather' and have stayed there and only got hotter plus the high humidex. I suppose there is no 'normal' any more, even here where we expect the unexpected as part of the norm. Very stressful for our crops, so I am really happy to be growing so many kinds of garlic, at least some of them can adapt and do well enough, in any kind of year.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

Some bulbs from my Hancock, MI dwelling SIL, which put The Gotch's to shame; huge and ten (10) + cloves per.

IMG_1608.jpg

The Gotch

[bower]

Will you be planting those, Gotch? They are lovely!
One of the benefits of the types that have many cloves, you don't need many bulbs for your seed, so it's a bigger crop.
I wonder what kind they are.

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

@Bower "Will you be planting those"

Yeah, buddy! It was everything The Gotch could do to convince his lovely and long-suffering wife from pressing them into her multiple recipe cooking endeavors today.

They'll be getting a primo 55-60 plant plot (which has produced our best bulbs) that gets intense early/mid-season early morning-to-mid afternoon sun which also reflects from behind, off'n some east-facing siding.

The Gotch

[svalli]

All garlic is now in the house to finish curing process. I have stripped the leaves from around the scapes to check signs of hiding onion maggots and signs of Botrytis porri, which I discovered last year to be the culprit of some garlic going bad during curing.

Garlic curing.jpg

Last fall I halved my planted clove quantity and now I am thinking again to do make the quantity even smaller, since cleaning these is so much work in time when there is also berry picking and jam and juice cooking going on.

Sari

[MissS]

That is a lovely harvest but yes it's a lot of work to prepare for storage.

[Danny]

Really some nice looking garlic ! Anyone have suggestions as to varieties here in Texas? We like intense and "hot" garlic pretty much. Suggestions and sources would be appreciated.