Of Garlic and Lessons Learned...

[Zeedman]

Garlic was one of the few bright spots in my garden this year... and now that I've opened all bulbs to prepare for planting & dehydration, I'm finally getting around to posting photos.

German White (hard neck / porcelain type) Consistently large bulbs which break open easily. Large cloves with no doubles, and good clove skins. Over 4# from 25 cloves planted.


Krasnodar Red (hard neck / marbled purple stripe type) Large to very large bulbs. Large cloves, with occasional double cloves. This rebounded incredibly well after deer (and veggie poachers ) destroyed half of the crop last year. About 3.5# from 25 cloves planted.

 

[ducks4you]

WOW! I thought deer hated garlic!

 

[Zeedman]

2024 garlic, continued:

Ron's Single Center (a.k.a. Trueheart) (soft neck / artichoke type). Very sensitive to wet feet, but bulbs can be very large if soil is well drained. Consistently large cloves with tight skins even in the center, with very few of the 'mini cloves' so common in most soft neck garlics - so the increase is very high. Lost a few plants in Spring, but over 3# from 25 cloves planted.

Special Idaho (hard neck / rocambole type) Very large bulbs, but fairly difficult to break open. The cloves are highly variable in size, with double (or even triple) cloves on nearly every bulb. The clove skins are very loose, and frequently break open during separation, so storage is poor. So why is this my favorite garlic? Because it has great winter hardiness, and consistently produces huge bulbs, regardless of bad weather or weed pressure. It even produces large bulbs if the scapes are cut late, and decent sized bulbs even if the bulbils are left on. This is probably the closest thing to fool-proof garlic! Those loose skins are easy to remove for drying, and it makes a great garlic powder. About 4# from 25 cloves planted.


Carpati (soft neck / artichoke type) Large bulbs (potentially very large in a good year) but very temperamental from year to year. Much like "Ron's" above, there are very few 'mini cloves', even in the center. It bears less than Ron's above, and I am trying to go down to only one variety per type; but Carpati has a unique characteristic that makes it worth keeping - it signals when it is ready to harvest. The tops fall over when mature, much like onions (Ron's doesn't do this). And because Carpati is usually the first variety to be ready, it tells me when to start checking all the others.

The total harvest weight for the 5 varieties listed above was about 16#, from 115 cloves planted (in a 3' wide bed, 5 per foot in staggered rows). I dropped 3 varieties this year: Georgian Crystal (porcelain), Estonian Red (marbled purple stripe) and Vic's (rocambole)... those were all given away, but probably were another 3-4 pounds total.

I still haven't planted for 2024/2025; but since the freeze is late this year & the ground is still soft, there is still plenty of time. I intend to plant 150 cloves (30 each of the 5 listed here) but this may be my last large-scale planting.