Ridgerunner
Garden Master
- Joined
- Mar 20, 2009
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- Southeast Louisiana Zone 9A
Dug the rest of my garlic today. I grow two kinds. Silver Rose softneck (on the left) and a hardneck I only know as elephant garlic on the right. I'd already dug the bit on the lower left, but maybe you can see about how much I let the tops dry before I harvest them by looking at the others.
Silver Rose softneck have larger cloves around the head but the center has some pretty small cloves. I tried an experiment this year that I did last year, wanting to see if the results were repeatable. They were. I planted the larger cloves from a head in one spot and the smaller cloves in another to see what size garlic heads I got. You'd expect the smaller heads to not do as well. That wasn't really true though. I can't tell much if any difference in the heads produced. Those tiny cloves did well.
I don't know what they are called, maybe someone can help me out on that, but the hardneck elephant garlic produces a bunch of small hard cloves, those things you see on the bottom right. You can see one that I did not take off on the far right elephant garlic towards the top right. Those are not from the garlic scapes. They grow around the garlic head in the ground. More on those in a minute.
This spring I found several garlic volunteers in the garden so I transplanted them to a safe place for them to grow. You can se what I got in the center of that drying frame on the left. The tops had totally died before I dug them. Those are not heads of garlic cloves. They are one massive single round clove of garlic. I plan to plant those this fall for regular garlic heads next year. What I'm sure happened is that I missed several of those small hard cloves on the elephant garlic when I harvested them last year. They sprouted and produced those round heads. I think those are called "rounds".
I've tried planting those small hard cloves in the fall but they never sprouted. Obviously I did something wrong. Does anyone know how to plant those to get them to sprout? It's a two year investment to get a true head of garlic, but it would be interesting to try. And if you wanted a massive clove of garlic, you could use the rounds and not replant them. I'd love to have had some of those when I lived in South Louisiana and was going to crawfish, shrimp, and crab boils. Just toss them in that spicy cook water and let them cook then munch on that. Talk about keeping he vampires away.
Silver Rose softneck have larger cloves around the head but the center has some pretty small cloves. I tried an experiment this year that I did last year, wanting to see if the results were repeatable. They were. I planted the larger cloves from a head in one spot and the smaller cloves in another to see what size garlic heads I got. You'd expect the smaller heads to not do as well. That wasn't really true though. I can't tell much if any difference in the heads produced. Those tiny cloves did well.
I don't know what they are called, maybe someone can help me out on that, but the hardneck elephant garlic produces a bunch of small hard cloves, those things you see on the bottom right. You can see one that I did not take off on the far right elephant garlic towards the top right. Those are not from the garlic scapes. They grow around the garlic head in the ground. More on those in a minute.
This spring I found several garlic volunteers in the garden so I transplanted them to a safe place for them to grow. You can se what I got in the center of that drying frame on the left. The tops had totally died before I dug them. Those are not heads of garlic cloves. They are one massive single round clove of garlic. I plan to plant those this fall for regular garlic heads next year. What I'm sure happened is that I missed several of those small hard cloves on the elephant garlic when I harvested them last year. They sprouted and produced those round heads. I think those are called "rounds".
I've tried planting those small hard cloves in the fall but they never sprouted. Obviously I did something wrong. Does anyone know how to plant those to get them to sprout? It's a two year investment to get a true head of garlic, but it would be interesting to try. And if you wanted a massive clove of garlic, you could use the rounds and not replant them. I'd love to have had some of those when I lived in South Louisiana and was going to crawfish, shrimp, and crab boils. Just toss them in that spicy cook water and let them cook then munch on that. Talk about keeping he vampires away.
