is getting close to planting time for garlic. which is mid-october-ish
here in western new york.

i'm learning from mistakes and hoping to increase my yield in 2023. in
2021 we planted 120 cloves. out of that we harvested 87 bulbs. during
curing some went soft and we were left with 76 bulbs. the largest were
set aside to plant another 120 cloves. we have plenty to left to enjoy
eating but not enough.

i used shredded straw as a mulch for the winter and think i put it down
too early and pulled it off too late. there were quite a few plants
which sprouted but never made it to the surface through the mulch. it
matted heavily over the winter. a few plants that crawled around a bit
underneath trying to get out survived but grew into 2 clove mini-garlic.

is it wrong to expect a better yield using a better methods. 63% seems
quite low.

--
fos@sdf.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - https://sdf.org

On 9/27/2022 10:45 AM, fos@sdf.org wrote:
> is getting close to planting time for garlic. which is mid-october-ish
> here in western new york.
>
> i'm learning from mistakes and hoping to increase my yield in 2023. in
> 2021 we planted 120 cloves. out of that we harvested 87 bulbs. during
> curing some went soft and we were left with 76 bulbs. the largest were
> set aside to plant another 120 cloves. we have plenty to left to enjoy
> eating but not enough.
>
> i used shredded straw as a mulch for the winter and think i put it down
> too early and pulled it off too late. there were quite a few plants
> which sprouted but never made it to the surface through the mulch. it
> matted heavily over the winter. a few plants that crawled around a bit
> underneath trying to get out survived but grew into 2 clove mini-garlic.
>
> is it wrong to expect a better yield using a better methods. 63% seems
> quite low.
>
We plant here in coastal Maine towards the last of November at Lat. 45. We
have been a bit late and actually planted it in frosted mud without
troubles.You might be too early and get too much growth in the fall.

We also use Rocambole hard-neck German Red garlic and plant it so the bottom
of the clove is down twice as deep as the clove - about 2" down on a 1"
clove. Got more bulbs than the cloves we planted this year do to splitting.

The next two links are very good instructionals from the Univ. of Maine.

Growing garlic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3FTht2DIJu8

Harvesting garlic - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=En2lXhOS5X4

Some folks leave the mulch on and don't take it off, but I usually remove
about 1/2 of it and leave the rest for mulching and soil amending.

fos@sdf.org wrote:

> is getting close to planting time for garlic. which is mid-october-ish
> here in western new york.
>
> i'm learning from mistakes and hoping to increase my yield in 2023. in
> 2021 we planted 120 cloves. out of that we harvested 87 bulbs. during
> curing some went soft and we were left with 76 bulbs. the largest were
> set aside to plant another 120 cloves. we have plenty to left to enjoy
> eating but not enough.
>
> i used shredded straw as a mulch for the winter and think i put it down
> too early and pulled it off too late. there were quite a few plants
> which sprouted but never made it to the surface through the mulch. it
> matted heavily over the winter. a few plants that crawled around a bit
> underneath trying to get out survived but grew into 2 clove mini-garlic.
>
> is it wrong to expect a better yield using a better methods. 63% seems
> quite low.

that is pretty low. i may not always get perfect bulbs
back but i rarely lose a lot of what i plant.

i don't mulch at all. hard neck garlic. normally plant
anytime between Oct 1st and the day before the ground
freezes. it is very hardy stuff - i've never been able
to kill it off.

mainly for us it is a matter of me remembering to get it
done.

this past year i didn't plant enough so i'll increase my
cloves this time around.

full sun, good drainage, reasonable soil quality. keep
watered and weeded. i don't trim scapes. the largest
cloves planted give back nice sized bulbules so i grow
those to give away to people who want to plant garlic.
it is one of the most popular things i have to give out.

i better put it on my list of things to get done the
next few weeks as after that i'm likely to be too busy
with other things.

songbird

On 9/27/22 15:33, songbird wrote:
> i don't trim scapes.

Everyone else tells you to do that. How
did you figure out they were blowing hot air?

Am I hurting mine by cutting them off?

I do not cut off my white onions scapes, but
rather harvest them for seeds when the seeds
turn black. Does not seem to hurt them at all.

I have thought of harvesting my garlic seeds, but
do seeds not take two years to mature into bulbs?

T wrote:
> On 9/27/22 15:33, songbird wrote:
>> i don't trim scapes.
>
> Everyone else tells you to do that. How
> did you figure out they were blowing hot air?

i try to keep things simple and think in terms
of total yeild and have different goals than just
the bulb size. i get pretty large cloves (about
the size of my thumb) anyways so it must not make
that much of a difference for the variety i grow.

nothing wrong doing it other ways, just not a
thing i worry about.

if i weren't able to give them away then it
would be another source of garlic for eating -
one form or another it's edible.

> Am I hurting mine by cutting them off?

if you're cutting the scapes off early i don't
think it hurts anything - to me the issue would
be more if you were leaving them to grow more
and then cutting them off since then that would
be a wasted leaf/stem that meant the energy
could have gone the other direction instead.

> I do not cut off my white onions scapes, but
> rather harvest them for seeds when the seeds
> turn black. Does not seem to hurt them at all.

onions that have flowered often have an odd
shape to the bulb and a lot of people don't like
that for cooking prep. i just work around it.
this season i had a nice red onion bulb that was
off to the side of the flower stalk. it was just
as large as most of the onions i get so we used it
for cooking. no problem with me at all.

> I have thought of harvesting my garlic seeds, but
> do seeds not take two years to mature into bulbs?

longer than that for larger garlic bulbs (3-5yrs).
as you've seen when you start from little scapes or
bulbs it takes time to get bigger to get to the bigger
bulbs and cloves. if you keep eating all your
biggest cloves you'll not get bigger bulbs the next
season.

the reason to plant scapes or small cloves would
be to increase your overall plant count as much as
possible in a short period of time. i've done it,
it works, i've had thousands of scapes growing and
eventually many of them got harvested after some
years, but since i'd scattered them in alfalfa and
birdsfoot trefoil it was tough to get them all out
of there later...

songbird

On 9/27/2022 6:33 PM, songbird wrote:
> fos@sdf.org wrote:
>
>> is getting close to planting time for garlic. which is mid-october-ish
>> here in western new york.
>>
>> i'm learning from mistakes and hoping to increase my yield in 2023. in
>> 2021 we planted 120 cloves. out of that we harvested 87 bulbs. during
>> curing some went soft and we were left with 76 bulbs. the largest were
>> set aside to plant another 120 cloves. we have plenty to left to enjoy
>> eating but not enough.
>>
>> i used shredded straw as a mulch for the winter and think i put it down
>> too early and pulled it off too late. there were quite a few plants
>> which sprouted but never made it to the surface through the mulch. it
>> matted heavily over the winter. a few plants that crawled around a bit
>> underneath trying to get out survived but grew into 2 clove mini-garlic.
>>
>> is it wrong to expect a better yield using a better methods. 63% seems
>> quite low.
>
> that is pretty low. i may not always get perfect bulbs
> back but i rarely lose a lot of what i plant.
>
> i don't mulch at all. hard neck garlic. normally plant
> anytime between Oct 1st and the day before the ground
> freezes. it is very hardy stuff - i've never been able
> to kill it off.
>
> mainly for us it is a matter of me remembering to get it
> done.
>
> this past year i didn't plant enough so i'll increase my
> cloves this time around.
>
> full sun, good drainage, reasonable soil quality. keep
> watered and weeded. i don't trim scapes. the largest
> cloves planted give back nice sized bulbules so i grow
> those to give away to people who want to plant garlic.
> it is one of the most popular things i have to give out.
>
> i better put it on my list of things to get done the
> next few weeks as after that i'm likely to be too busy
> with other things.
>
>
> songbird
I think not cutting off the scapes means you are missing out on a wonderful
garlic by-product of Scape Pesto. And you WILL get bigger bulbs that way. I
cut my scapes off when they tips have made it 3/4 of the way back to
vertical. I keep the stem and toss everything from the blossom out.

We planted 2 x 96 of our biggest cloves and got garlic on them all. And the
scapes processed with olive oil, parmesan cheese, a bit of salt and nut of
your choice (walnut works for me) and we got over 24 cups of pesto. Instant
garlic bread spread, put on crackers or with pasta. Yum

On 2022-09-27, songbird <songbird@anthive.com> wrote:

> i better put it on my list of things to get done the
> next few weeks as after that i'm likely to be too busy
> with other things.

thanks for the advice everyone.

some things i'm changing;

we planted way too deep last fall. i don't remember what compelled us to
do it, but we planted six inches deep. d'oh! this year will be between
two to three inches depending on size of cloves.

the prior two years we purchased seed garlic from Burpee. Romanian Red,
hardneck, and their advice was to plant soon as the garlic, which was
ordered late summer, arrived. that was early to mid october. by mid
october the bed will prepared, but the garlic isn't going to be planted
until we get a good hard frost and the soil is a bit crusty. we had
growth make it to the surface in the fall the last two years. i've read
it can act like a straw to suck moisture out of the cloves causing rot
once killed by the cold.

we do need to mulch i think. our winters now consist of quite a few
freezing and thawing cycles anymore. we need to mulch to help prevent
heaving. we'll put it down several inches thick once the ground is
nearly frozen and pull it off in the spring as it thaws leaving only
enough to keep weeds down. will look for and push back down any cloves
found on the surface.

with good soil amendments, plenty of organic material and proper
nutrients, and maintaining moist soil throughout winter which got
ignored the first two years, i'm expecting much better results next
year.

i'm with others here, we remove the scapes and make garlic scape &
basil pesto with most of it. the rest i use in salads. we cut them off
after they make one loop and point at the sky again. any longer than
that they can become too "woody", so i have read.

--
fos@sdf.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - https://sdf.org

fos@sdf.org wrote:
....
> the prior two years we purchased seed garlic from Burpee. Romanian Red,
> hardneck, and their advice was to plant soon as the garlic, which was
> ordered late summer, arrived. that was early to mid october. by mid
> october the bed will prepared, but the garlic isn't going to be planted
> until we get a good hard frost and the soil is a bit crusty. we had
> growth make it to the surface in the fall the last two years. i've read
> it can act like a straw to suck moisture out of the cloves causing rot
> once killed by the cold.

i don't think that should be that much of a problem really
as if you have to worry about that dry of a climate then
you would have to water during the dry and warmer spells.
during the really cold times there shouldn't be that much
transpiration happening anyways.

also remember that the bulb and cloves don't form until
the following warmer season so there shouldn't be an issue
with anything from the stems affecting the bulb unless you
stop watering too soon, have a drought or something else
strange happens.

> we do need to mulch i think. our winters now consist of quite a few
> freezing and thawing cycles anymore. we need to mulch to help prevent
> heaving. we'll put it down several inches thick once the ground is
> nearly frozen and pull it off in the spring as it thaws leaving only
> enough to keep weeds down. will look for and push back down any cloves
> found on the surface.

i've never had a problem with frost heaving garlic out of
the ground, but i have had some cloves get uprooted by deer
trampling around looking for other things to eat.

> with good soil amendments, plenty of organic material and proper
> nutrients, and maintaining moist soil throughout winter which got
> ignored the first two years, i'm expecting much better results next
> year.

:) hope it works out! :)

> i'm with others here, we remove the scapes and make garlic scape &
> basil pesto with most of it. the rest i use in salads. we cut them off
> after they make one loop and point at the sky again. any longer than
> that they can become too "woody", so i have read.

planting small cloves and anything extra you might have
down deeper is a way to get some good green garlic the
following spring and into early summer but i've found out
that i just don't have the time to dig it up that time of
the year so i don't grow it any more (i don't have a lot
of extra garlic now too that i'm growing less than i used
to and i'm not pulling up much from other spots).

songbird

Wilson wrote:
....
> Just curious. How much does everyone spend for 'seed garlic?'

i've never bought seed garlic. the garlic i've been
growing for many years was given to me by a friend and
i've been paying it forwards ever since.

> Or for that matter, how much do you sell it for?

i only grow a limited amount so i try to give it
away to people who will also pay it forward to others.

the best place for anyone to get garlic from me is
at the annual seed swap (or now to show up at the
monthly garden club meeting :) ). if i know you're
going to be there looking for garlic you could e-mail
me and let me know so i'm sure to bring some. just
as a general note not aimed specifically at you. :)

i say it is the best place because it means i'm not
having to spend money mailing it (which is getting to
be pretty expensive) and i can distribute samples to
multiple people for just the price of getting there.

songbird

On 10/2/2022 11:15 PM, songbird wrote:
> Wilson wrote:
> ...
>> Just curious. How much does everyone spend for 'seed garlic?'
>
> i've never bought seed garlic. the garlic i've been
> growing for many years was given to me by a friend and
> i've been paying it forwards ever since.
>
>
>> Or for that matter, how much do you sell it for?
>
> i only grow a limited amount so i try to give it
> away to people who will also pay it forward to others.
>
> the best place for anyone to get garlic from me is
> at the annual seed swap (or now to show up at the
> monthly garden club meeting :) ). if i know you're
> going to be there looking for garlic you could e-mail
> me and let me know so i'm sure to bring some. just
> as a general note not aimed specifically at you. :)
>
> i say it is the best place because it means i'm not
> having to spend money mailing it (which is getting to
> be pretty expensive) and i can distribute samples to
> multiple people for just the price of getting there.
>
>
> songbird
Thanks, songbird. Not looking to buy or swap any as I planted a lot and got
a lot. Fedco seeds is selling their German Red certified organic for about
$25/lb. Got our first frost of the season last night.

On 10/3/2022 8:46 AM, Wilson wrote:
> On 10/2/2022 11:15 PM, songbird wrote:
>> Wilson wrote:
>> ...
>>> Just curious. How much does everyone spend for 'seed garlic?'
>>
>>    i've never bought seed garlic.  the garlic i've been
>> growing for many years was given to me by a friend and
>> i've been paying it forwards ever since.
>>
>>
>>> Or for that matter, how much do you sell it for?
>>
>>    i only grow a limited amount so i try to give it
>> away to people who will also pay it forward to others.
>>
>>    the best place for anyone to get garlic from me is
>> at the annual seed swap (or now to show up at the
>> monthly garden club meeting :) ).  if i know you're
>> going to be there looking for garlic you could e-mail
>> me and let me know so i'm sure to bring some.  just
>> as a general note not aimed specifically at you.  :)
>>
>>    i say it is the best place because it means i'm not
>> having to spend money mailing it (which is getting to
>> be pretty expensive) and i can distribute samples to
>> multiple people for just the price of getting there.
>>
>>
>>    songbird
> Thanks, songbird. Not looking to buy or swap any as I planted a lot and
> got a lot. Fedco seeds is selling their German Red certified organic for
> about $25/lb. Got our first frost of the season last night.
>

Filiree Farm is a good source for varieties.