Garlic Question

[calendula]

I cleaned out one of my smaller gardens the other day, and noticed that I had left behind some garlic last fall, and it is starting to grow new tops. Is the garlic okay to harvest? What happens if you let it continue growing?

 

[lesa]

No reason you can't harvest it. Not sure what it would do, if you left it. My guess is they would just continue to grow. Since garlic gets planted in the fall and grows all season anyway...I'm conducting the experiment with some onions I left in the ground. They are growing and seem to be doing fine. We'll see!

 

[Ridgerunner]

How far along is it in development? If it is still pretty immature, you would probably get some garlic flavor from that bit of root you would find, but if you let it go, it will probably make cloves of garlic.

If it is growing in one clump, I'd think you could separate it and plant them individually to give them room. They may not make as big a clove transplanting them now that they would have had they been separated originally but I think you will get something unexpected you would be happy with. But if it is only one garlic plant and you can leave it where it is, it should do well.

I'm assuming it came up from cloves you left behind. I had a leek go to seed last year and this spring, I had some leak plants come up in that area from those seeds. A very pleasant surprise. Could yours be from garlic seed instead of the old cloves?

 

[journey11]

I just transplanted some "volunteer" garlic yesterday. I originally planted it Fall 2009 and maybe only 3 came up last spring, then got swallowed up by other things I had planted when I gave up on them. I had over a dozen volunteers come back, but I had to transplant them (out of the way) and to split them up, so they can go on to form a nice sized bulb. (Good spacing is 6" apart.)

If you have a permanent spot for a garlic patch, it's not a bad idea to leave a few behind for next year. Really, you can't get them all anyway. There's always little ones that will break off and get lost in the soil. And they can go on and on for years without any help from you. My last patch of garlic where I used to live is still there, but nobody harvests it!

Let your's keep growing until the tops turn brown and fall over, around July. Then the bulbs are ready for harvest and will keep well.

(ETA: Some types of garlic will form scapes and go to seed. I forget what kind I bought, but mine have never bloomed.)

 

[calendula]

Thank you for the replies all. I'm pretty sure it is from a clove I missed last year. It's in a spot where I can leave it, so I'm going to let it go and see what happens.

 

[patandchickens]

If it was just one clove, it is absolutely fine and will probably produce a bigger head than any you plant this spring In the north where you can get away with it, it's *preferred* to put your garlic cloves in in the fall, they grow larger that way.

If it was a whole *head* that was missed, experience (I seem to miss one every year, myself LOL) suggests that it will produce a whopping and rather splitty head of garlic that will not store all that well; unless it was one of those funny ones that instead of producing multiple cloves last year produced just one big solid one, in which case it may simply develop into a large normal-type head this year.

Either way, perfectly useful

Because it will have extra topgrowth a lot earlier than spring-planted garlic, you can consider harvesting little bits of it if you like the flavor of chopped-up garlic greens in an omelette or whatever. Don't take too much if you want it to head up well, of course.

Good luck, have fun,

Pat

 

[calendula]

Because it will have extra topgrowth a lot earlier than spring-planted garlic, you can consider harvesting little bits of it if you like the flavor of chopped-up garlic greens in an omelette or whatever. Don't take too much if you want it to head up well, of course.

That sounds really yummy, thanks.