Northern Hemisphere Garlic Ranchers/2024 Crop

[JRinPA]

LOL....yeah I guess so. I think I will uncover the covered bed in three weeks.

I'm glad some people had success with bulbils to rounds and/or spring planting. I was pretty disappointed by the rot/collapse of the "bulbils to rounds" garlic from this summer's pots. I had no idea that had happened until I was peeling for planting. I wish I'd had more time to consider it; I should have drove right home and gotten the biggest 2023 bulbils and planted some of them right then in December. Then I'd have a straight up comparison.

I hesitate to even attempt planting Bulbils in July when they are freshly picked. It would tie up the space for a whole year. And I've read the Allium Leaf Miner is even more damaging to fall crop. That is one of the reasons I have been delaying the fall planting, as I don't want any green leaves up before winter that the fly could propagate on.

[JRinPA]

https://extension.psu.edu/preventing-al ... -plantings

This says to Rotate your crop out of Alliums for at least a year. Solarize for 4 weeks during the summer with clear plastic. And to use tight fitting row cover (flys are small) in Sept-Oct and Mar-April. In spring the row cover needs hoops.

This all to combat yet another invasive species...those oceans are less and less of a barrier each year. Those nasty stinkbugs, lantern fly. and these allium leaf miners all came in through PA. Sorry bout that. We got some greedy, careless people here.

[WoodSprite]

I just found this conversation. I hope you don't mind if I jump in. (Haven't been on TJ in a while.)

I had allium leaf miner in my leeks and onions in 2022 but didn't realize what they were until Fall.

In 2023 I didn't grow leeks but saw signs of leaf miner damage on my young onions early in the season. I pulled & trashed (not composted) all of my onions (and it broke my heart to do it), removed and trashed the mulch and solarized those two beds. After I harvested the garlic, I did the same with that bed and partial beds. I also removed and trashed my common chives which also showed signs of leaf miner damage. The plastic was secured on the beds from late July until late December (when I finally got around to removing it). Hopefully it killed any pupa that were in the soil of those beds.

I planted garlic again in other beds (I'm on a 3-year rotation cycle) on October 15 which is my normal garlic-planting day. I plant them approx. 6" apart in multiple staggered rows in 6' diameter round bed raised beds made from stock tanks.

I have the bricks all laid out so in March I can cover the beds with insect barrier and put the bricks all around the perimeter to keep those $%@#^ allium leaf miners out. Sadly, I've decided not to plant onions (one of my favorite crops) this year and will focus on keeping the garlic healthy. I hope it's enough so I can grow onions next year and start another chives plant from seeds.

I'm amazed my how many cloves most of you plant. 112 cloves total is more than enough for the two of us and for replanting in the fall.

I planted:
Favorite for many years: German White Stiffneck.
New last year and tastes similar to GWS: Music.
First time planting: Montana Giant, Rosewood, Dog House.

I didn't replant: Siberian (I like it a lot but not as much as the first two I listed) or Georgian Crystal (to me it hardly has any flavor at all).

I very much look forward to tasting and comparing the varieties that I'm growing this year. I keep telling myself that I should grow only German White because I love it so much but I can't stop myself from experimenting with a few other varieties, too.

[WoodSprite]

I forgot to say that I mulch all of my beds with fine pine shavings from Tractor Supply Co. I add more after I plant the garlic then water it in to help the mulch knit together and not blow away and to settle the soil around the garlic cloves better. (This is a photo from 2021 or 2022. You can see some of my garlic and onions in the beds at the back of the photo.)

_mulch - fine pine shavings.JPG

[CrazyAboutOrchids]

I planted:
Favorite for many years: German White Stiffneck.
New last year and tastes similar to GWS: Music.
First time planting: Montana Giant, Rosewood, Dog House.

I've grown Music for years here in CT. For me, 100 in the ground should get me enough for use and replanting. I hope you will like Rosewood, it's the other I grow. Tried it on a whim after it was suggested to me a few years back. Do enjoy it. You'll have to report back on your results!

[WoodSprite]

@CrazyAboutOrchids - I've heard lots of good reviews for Music and like it a lot, too. It's good to hear that you grow Rosewood, too. I'll have to do a side-by-side taste test of all of them this year, raw and cooked, to see what I think of them all.

I like to grow just a few of multiple different varieties for all of my veggies. I ordered only 1/4 lb each of the new-to-me varieties. I received 1 large bulb each of Rosewood and Montana Giant and was impressed by their sizes. They are about the size of my biggest Music bulbs. I'm not impressed by the small size (bulbs and cloves) of Dog House and highly doubt I'll grow it again.

This is what I received, along with a free mesh bag for the harvest. This was the first time I ordered from Mad River Garlic Growers and am very happy with what I received. I'll order from them again when I want to try a new variety.

IMG_1096-labeled.jpg

[karstopography]

My son is studying abroad in the Republic of Georgia. I’m asking him if possible to pick up some heads of garlic there, Georgia Fire and Georgia Crystal for sure those two, and anything else that looks promising. He’s a budding foodie and loves garlic so we’ll see what we manages to come up with. Georgia is a land of little markets selling all kinds of produce.

My daughter picked up a little Russian Red garlic from some Hutterite farmers and Spanish Roja garlic at a farmer’s market on her travels last year in the northwest. I planted a few cloves of each and ate the rest and the planted in November 2023 ones look great out there in the garden. I did try to vernalize both for several weeks in a near freezing fridge prior to planting. Maybe they’ll even put out scrapes.

I just like looking at garlic growing out in the garden. I swear I can smell it when I walk by, but maybe that’s my imagination. I like planting it in a block rather than rows, but I wasn’t very precise in my spacing. My crop of Lorz Italian was great last year even if the individual cloves tended to be smaller than what I planted. I don’t mind the small cloves, it’s all useful, big or small. I don’t fuss over my garlic or bulb onions. Maybe I’ll throw some water with fish emulsion on the onions and garlic once in a while. Bugs don’t bother these crops in my experience and it’s nice to have a crop or two like garlic and onions that don’t require constant inputs of time, attention to detail and materials to get a decent and useful harvest.

Tomatoes fill that high maintenance role well enough.

[WoodSprite]

Bugs don’t bother these crops in my experience and it’s nice to have a crop or two like garlic and onions that don’t require constant inputs of time, attention to detail and materials to get a decent and useful harvest.

I agree they are very easy crops. Thankfully allium leaf miner has only been a recent problem (since it found it's way to Pennsylvania). Before that, I never had a problem growing garlic or onions. Now I have to put effort into using insect barrier to keep them off.

You might ask your son to find garlic varieties that don't have variety names that he recognizes. He/You might "find" the next great garlic! That would be so cool!

[rxkeith]

we are down here in florida on account of our son.
while here we decided to buy a car for the lad. he will need one down here eventually.
at the dealership, we saw a guy there wearing a shirt that had a garland food logo. we started
talking. he said they were a whole sale supplier of garlic, onions, and ginger, just those three
items to walmart, and some other grocery stores. we told him we love garlic, and grow it back home.
he asked us if we wanted some garlic. sure, we said. he gave us a six oz bag of fresh peeled garlic cloves.
package says they are a product of spain. don't know if they are hard neck or soft neck, but we are going to
eat some, and see how it tastes, and i plan on planting some in the spring if i can keep them in good shape
until then. garland has at least one nice guy working for them.


keith

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

2024 Northern Hemisphere Garlic Ranchers...Start Yer Engines...the Season has Begun!

thumbnail_IMG_2566.jpg

The Gotch

[WoodSprite]

I just checked mine yesterday and there are not sprouts yet.

[JRinPA]

I took the solid black mulch off the long bed yesterday, I was hoping there were none up yet, and didn't see any. It was getting dark though. I didn't check the shorter bed, but it might have some coming through the leaf mulch. If not, it will be soon. When I would plant a month earlier in a raised box they would be up through the snow in the end of February -a cool look.

[karstopography]

IMG_3419.jpeg

IMG_3420.jpeg

My Russian Red Garlic is rather robust as compared to the Lorz Italian I grew last year.

[bower]

Big stems make big bulbs.

[svalli]

I just checked the nearest weather center to my garlic bed and it shows the snow depth at 64cm (2 feet). So I will not see any sprouts for some time, even now the days have finally been above freezing. Snow is good insulation and this year it came early in November, which is good for the garlic.

[JRinPA]

Yesterday evening I checked for sprouts. They are up in both beds. The cloves were a good 3" deep so it is 3.25" of leaf. I think mid-December planting works fine, here. I just wish I had directly planted some simple bulbils to compare.

The short bed that is planted through the black mulch and covered with shredded leaves needed to have some leaf mulch scraped back to show the green. That was all regular cloves and has holes for a bunch. 13x7? holes in a 9x4ft. That is my original black mulch I burned for garlic fall of '17, I think. I didn't use it for a couple years, it has seen some good crops.

01.JPG

02.JPG

The long bed with 4 rows that was just uncovered yesterday simply needed a very close look to see some sprouts.

03.JPG

04.JPG

05.JPG

(Cell phone pics..they always go haywire with rotation between thumbnail and the click to zoom, but I fixed them by removing upload, rotating the originals through a full 360, then re-uploading. That always seems to work - the file size increments a small amount each time.)

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

Upper Garlic bed (intense morning sun); little ahead of schedule in these here parts:

thumbnail_IMG_2572.jpg

The Gotch

[karstopography]

Up March 1st, so when will these be ready to harvest?

[Cornelius_Gotchberg]

Up March 1st, so when will these be ready to harvest?

Rolling average is the ~Ides of July, the 13th in '23.

The Gotch

[karstopography]

Up March 1st, so when will these be ready to harvest?

Rolling average is the ~Ides of July, the 13th in '23.

The Gotch

Does this garlic you planted right at the end of October come up in the fall at all or is March the first time you’ve seen it since you planted the cloves?

I’ve got a few northern sourced, far north in Montana and NorthEastern Oregon type hard necks, Russian Red and Spanish Roja, planted in mid November that I had kept in the 33° fridge for 9 weeks or so prior to planting to mimic a winter and so I’m counting the days above the soil the garlic has grown as a potential days to harvest indicator. My garlic made its above ground debut December 1st so if the math is roughly the same for mine as it is for yours I should be looking at a mid April harvest, which jives with what happened last year with my Lorz Italian Soft Necked Garlic, although I was a bit late getting to that.