Garlic

[TheSeedObsesser]

We use a lot of garlic around here and I'm only now starting to get serious about growing it. I think that I know enough about garlic to grow some, maybe (planted in fall, harvested in spring, loose soil is probably best), but is there anything that I'm missing or might have been wrong about? Are garlic plants heavy feeders or do better in poor soil? Would too much moisture or the soil being a little bit on the dry side be a bad thing when the plants are still in the ground? Are softneck varieties better than hardneck varieties or vise versa? (Would hardneck varieties stand up better to strong winds than softneck varieties?) Do you clean the bulbs after you pull them?

 

[Ridgerunner]

Garlic, like onions, are heavy feeders. Nitrogen and compost is a good thing. They need to be moist but too wet is bad. Too dry is bad. Evenly moist is good.

The man differences I'm aware of on softneck versus hardneck. Softneck tend to keep better than hardneck. You can weave the tops of the softneck easier than the hardneck if that's how you store them. Hardneck make scapes, soft neck don't. Hardnecks tend to make evenly sized and large cloves while softneck has larger cloves on the outside and smaller cloves in the middle of the head.

When I harvest, I pull or dig them up, shake the worst of the dirt off, and let them cure a week or so in the sun. Try to not let it rain on them. Then I shake or somewhat gently rub any clumps of dirt off (kind of scrape through the roots but leave the roots on) and hang them in a shed out of the sun and rain but with great ventilation. Before it gets cold enough to freeze I move them to my attached garage where I hang them in mesh bags with good ventilation. I get the loose dirt off but can't say I clean them all that well.

Sometime from mid-September to early October I plant the next years crop. Mine are just getting ready to harvest now. I harvest when the tops die. I dug a few two days ago but most of the rest have a few days to go.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Thanks!

My planting date would probably be somewhere around mid/late August - early September then. My guess is that you stop watering once the plants start to dry down?

 

[Smart Red]

Ditto! I'm with Ridgerunner on the garlic, however, I braid mine and hang them in the kitchen once they have cured. Just cut and use.

 

[thistlebloom]

Thanks!

My planting date would probably be somewhere around mid/late August - early September then. My guess is that you stop watering once the plants start to dry down?

Seedo, I plant mine in October and I'm quite a bit north of you.
What you're aiming for is the soil to still be warm enough to encourage root growth, but not so warm to get them to sprout.
You want them in a static state through the winter and then to wake up and grow in the spring.

 

[Smart Red]

I have planted mine as late as November -- weather permitting. With all the rain we've been having, there's no chance of letting them dry down as they die back.

 

[Chickie'sMomaInNH]

i'd say October is a better time for planting garlic. i do both soft and hard-neck garlic. soft-neck tend to be the first to harvest. i have Susanville, Transylvanian, and Italian Late. i pulled the Susanville and Transylvanian yesterday and some were decent sized but some were small cloves so produced small bulbs.

i have 20 different hard-necks i did for this year. i saved some i grew last year, a lot i was able to get locally at a garlic festival. others i bought online. i only had about 3-5 bulbs of each i planted but this year they look very nice and have been producing scapes. i'm deciding if i want to cut those off or let them bloom and use the bulbils to expand even more for future years.

 

[Ridgerunner]

I'm far enough south that mine will send up some green shoots that stay green all winter. it doesn't matter that much how late I plant them, they will green up some in the winter. We get some nice days. Sometimes they get some brown on the ends if we have a real heavy freeze but they soon grow out of that in the spring. I usually scatter some wheat straw over them to insulate the roots some but I'm not sure how necessary even that is.

 

[TheSeedObsesser]

Thanks! Good thing you said something, I probably would have gone out and planted them way too early. Hopefully as it gets colder it will get drier - we've been getting a lot of rain here too, we usually do but this is making me think that I'm somewhere in the Amazon.

Considering how brutal and long (with little snow cover) this winter was I think that I will give them a good layer of mulch (but not too much, don't want them getting choked out in the spring).

 

[timberlane]

We always plant on Columbus day.