We had couple of warm weeks in April and then the winter did strike back with some snow storms a week ago. On Saturday I was finally able to go and work in our country side garden. I pulled the winter blanket of leaves away from the garlic beds. Part of the ground had still some snow on it and soil was frozen. There was already quite long shoots poking through the leaves on the other end where the snow was already gone.

Now the sun can warm the soil and hopefully more shoots will emerge.


Sari

I enjoy watching your garlic grow. You have it down to a science.

I guess that is the same winter blast asmx was talking about in Germany! I hope your spring comes on directly.
This year our soil was thawed in early April, so garlic and crocuses were up early, but we had no sunshine and three times the normal amount of rain. I just removed the garlic mulch last week when the rain finally let up. There were some yellow tips on the back bed garlic but they recovered completely after a couple of sunny days. I'm very happy with the survivorship on all varieties this year - only a couple of misses. We are a bit ahead of you this year, although the growth seemed very slow for those weeks in April.
The Tree Harvester was here this morning and took down a few trees that were shading and invading a couple of the garlic beds. Ravens were a bit upset but are out there now investigating the new look. This should make a big difference to the garlic though!

my garlic is up and running too.

i used to mulch my garlic with a layer of leaves, but found the leaves to be too heavy,
and by the time i was able to pull the leaves off in the spring, the garlic would have sprouted
several inches, and i would end up breaking stems off. nowadays, i just let the snow act as an
insulator, and mulch. i have to keep the chickens out of the garden, and the deer from tromping around.
the garlic seems to do ok, comes up just fine.


keith

Garlic is up and away here Down Under as well. Early Turbans would be pushing 6 inches high, later planted turbans are well through as is Elephant Garlic first of the Porcelains. Lots still to come. All got a boost with the beautiful weekend weather we had, pushing 70F

Keith, you should be able to find pine needles Use them for mulch if you have no way to shred leaves. Even after a winter of snow there is currently at least 2" of mixed shredded leaves and white pine needles on my garlic bed. In almost 40 years I have never pulled mulch away from my garlic. That meant as much as 6" of straw when I was using that. It was important this past month when the rainfall total was less than 1½". The thick mulch kept the soil from drying out.

Martin

Oh yuck, Oh yuck!
Rust on my garlic for the 1st time ever! I've grown it off and on for 30 yrs here and never seen it before nor in previous gardens elsewhere.
I read online that it can blow in on the wind. Tsk!
Am spraying weekly or after it rains with sulphur & a drop of soap.



Nothing at all on the elephant garlic which they say is not affected. True!

Ever since getting 3½" bulbs from my own Martin's at We Grow Garlic, I have been positive that I will see 4". Every year since has been something wrong for garlic growth. The bed was set up perfectly last fall with loads of compost and horse manure. Fall growth was perfect and winter was good for them. Spring growth was perfect. Now closing on mid-June and rainfall since 1 April has been less than 3". Scapes at full curl on plants a foot shorter than normal. I'll be lucky to see 3" bulbs. That's gardening!

Martin

Next year for sure! That's gardening too!

28 bulbs of Lorz Italian garlic were dug last weekend and hung under the pole shed to dry out a bit. Yesterday I trimmed the roots, removed the outer layer of dirty wrapping, tied them in bundles and hung them from the trusses of the tool shed where It's nice and dry. No humidity and damp morning air in there and it has worked well before. After a few weeks I'll bring them into the house where they'll hang in an interior closet for the duration.





This is the first time planting Lorz so a lot of this will be replanted this fall to bulk up the supply. There's more garlic to dig, probably about 75% of what was planted. I'm trying to find a few dry days to make that happen but I can't wait much longer.

Very nice GoDawgs! I see the artichokes are really a good fit for your climate. Hope your weather dries up for the rest!

This year likewise has had some challenges for garlic here. First April, which was three times normal rainfall and the wettest April on record. They were up early due to the ground being thawed by early April but hardly grew very much with the scarce amount of sunshine. The wet made the Purple Stripes just squawk, leaves all askew even more than usual, and there was lots of pink/purple at the base of stems especially the porcelains which don't normally have that color. Then May, which was the 4th driest May on record. I didn't water due to the unthinkable amount of wetting they had, but by the end of May there were signs of drought. The Marbled family garlic are all showing the drought stress with a little yellow tips on the top growth. Porcelains, Glazers and Creole looking really perfect with dark green leaves in spite of that, and Purple Stripes looking better too, they can handle drying out a bit. OTOH the Artichokes were most dismayed by the snow we had a couple of days ago. Gee they looked miserable, but are back to business now.

It is rare to get a perfect year for garlic, but always interesting to see what they make of it.

I dug up all but my Metechi (still have 52 of those) today, as it was barely browning, but the other 3 were ready, or close to it, and rain is coming soon.
29 Montana Giants, which were actually the smallest! 6-29 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

28 Extra Hardy German Porcelain. 6-29 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

32 heads of Estonian Red, the largest, this season. 6-29 by pepperhead212, on Flickr

Scapes starting to emerge here a couple of days ago. It's a full week earlier than ever.
That's a beautiful harvest [mention]pepperhead212[/mention] !

I picked a couple today that were down to under 5 green leaves. The first was nice and big, the second rather small. But most of my garlic is still pretty green with 7 or so leaves. Last year I let it go too long, but it sure was big that way. This year I think I'll go back to 5 green. It may be a bit of time yet. I didn't get them in the ground until one night in mid-December when I had some time to do it. Yep, I was there with a headlamp and spade getting it in before it got cold. Instead of one bed I put them at the head of my raised rows, 9 each times 6 rows, then another row with maybe a 4x5 or 4x7 grid. Definitely a reduction for me this year to well under a hundred, but with good spacing.

I put cantaloupe or butternut in some patches to train up through the rows, so I will have to be careful when digging out the garlic. I did use wood chips as top mulch when I planted in December, but I scraped off as much as I could in April or early May. I can't do that again. I despise wood chips mixing into the soil. I'll have to make more effort to get leaves in the fall.

I think I picked the one in the front right of 105.jpg and it was nice and big. I had broken off all scapes as soon as I saw them this year, but found one today with a "wrong" looking head formed. Must have been that leftmost corner in 101.jpg.

Pics from 6/28 in the heat.

Just wanted to comment on the beautiful scapes on the marbled purple stripe varieties and also the glazers. They always have a bit of pink color on them which is very pretty, but with the cold wet weather in the past couple of days those scapes have turned a dark red! Wow are they ever pretty... If they had no bulbs, I would grow these for the beautiful scapes alone.

200 hundred plants fill up a wheel barrow. Good quality crop, not a bad one in the bunch. Dried on a wire rack and loosely covered with cardboard and then tarped. These should have gone another week or so but had to do it now. Would have plumped up considerably, still many fist size bulbs.

From today until next year's dig, how many hours go into making this crop? Tilling, scratching in some buckwheat, tilling in buckwheat, another crop is planted and tilled in. This puts me into late Sept. just in time for the manure. Cloves are planted, mulched and totally ignored until the shovel hits the ground in July. A rough estimate would be under 8 hours with most of the work being cleaning and boxing the bulbs to be cured. As far as productivity vs man hours, that's not too bad.

[mention]bjbebs[/mention] , that sure is some pretty garlic. Big suckers!

[mention]bjbebs[/mention] that garlic loves what you're doing, there's no doubt in my mind!

i got the rest of my garlic descaped today.
last year i got lazy, and left the scapes on. bulb size on the german hardneck
was smaller. there were a few large bulbs, but most did not reach the size i
usually get. the music, and other garlic that makes smaller bulbils did not seem
to decrease bulb size as much with the scapes on.
i had a lot of bulbils last year as a result. i planted about two hundred of the largest
bulbils that were marble size. i will be getting bulbs between 1& 1/2 to just under two
inches from most of them. garlic looks like its in good shape.


keith

I did manage to get some garlic from the rust infected lot I had this year. Most bulbs are smaller than usual except for the German White which seem not far off normal size. I have read that a 3 year gap is required so no garlic next year but a few elephant type will be planted as they were not affected by the rust.