Planning for next year, and CLUELESS

[ninjapoodles]

I'm in what--Zone 7/7b? I'm trying to order some garlic & shallot starts, and don't know where to look or what to get--I'm even stymied at the choice between hardneck and softneck garlic. What's the difference? What do I want? I'd like to be able to hang garlic to store, and maybe onions, too.

OR--you know those jars of pre-minced garlic you get in the store? Can we do that ourselves, if we grow the garlic? If so, how?

ALSO: I live on a rock, so pretty much any gardening I do has to be in built-up boxes above ground. Roses, however, do extremely well here...what else might do well?

And, has anyone grown potatoes or sweet potatoes in barrels? I just don't have enough topsoil to do the hilling up required for potatoes, but I'd REALLY like to grow some. Especially sweet potatoes.

 

[Rosalind]

It depends entirely on how much work you're willing to do. You can do nearly anything in raised beds, but if you must do raised beds then I would recommend getting a soaker hose irrigation system to water them. Unless you have a lot more time and a stronger back than me, that is. Raised beds suck up water real bad, it's almost as dry as container gardening.

Lots of fruit are related to roses: strawberries, raspberries, apples, pears, etc. So you could probably do strawberries or raspberries, those will be happy in raised beds.

Some garden centers will have shallots and garlic starts, but failing that you can plant the kind you get at the store for a harvest next summer. Just break the bulbs into individual cloves, stick 'em 2" in the ground pointy-side-up, add a layer of mulch or straw, you're all set.

Hardneck garlic has a hard stem in the middle. It tastes a little bit stronger, spicier than the softneck kind, often get bigger individual cloves. If you are a bit of a dork like me, and like to have onion and garlic braids hanging around the kitchen, you can't really braid hardneck garlic--you just kind of bundle the dried stems together and do something a little macrame-ish with twine to tie them up. Softneck garlic you can braid, the stems are soft. You just braid the dried stems with a piece of doubled-over twine braided in, looks nice.

I don't see why you couldn't pre-mince and can garlic if you really wanted to...personally I find those canned garlic things to taste a bit strange, so I never use 'em, but Ball jars in 1/2 c. sizes are available.

In zone 7, look for a shorter-season sweet potato and plant it in an area with a southerly exposure. Sweet potatoes need long hot summers. I know there exist short-season sweet potatoes, don't know what they are as I stick with punkins for that sort of thing.

 

[curly_kate]

I think it was blurose who mentioned on another post that you have to be very careful storing minced garlic in oil. Apparently, it's a lovely medium for botulism.

I did potatoes & onions in a raised bed this year - they turned out really well. I've also heard of growing potatoes in a stack of old tires or an old garbage can. I know there are some 90 day varieties of sweet potatoes, so keep an eye out for those.

 

[me&thegals]

Someone had a link in here about growing potatoes in straw. Could you do a search for that? I'm going to try that out next year--it really sounded promising, easy and perfect for someone without deep, rich soil (which I have--I'm just looking to cut labor). Good luck!

 

[patandchickens]

DO NOT try to store minced garlic except either frozen (not all that good, IME, and doesn't store all that long) or PRESSURE-CANNED. The store-boughten stuff is, in essence, pressure canned in oil. If you just mince it in oil and put it in the fridge, you may wake up one morning dead of botulism.

There is supposed to be a difference in hardneck vs softneck garlic in how long it stores (normally, as heads of garlic, I mean) but I forget which is which. Hardneck doesn't braid so well, but as Rosalind says you can hang it in bunches, or do what my mom does and stuff the heads into a pantyhose leg so you have a long garlic-head-filled 'sausage' hanging over the basement stairs to bop you in the noggin everytime you go down there :> I would suggest a different location, but otherwise it seems to work well. She removes them from the bottom - used to keep it closed by knotting, now with a potatochip-bag clip, and puts a twist-tie around the 'sausage' every few heads so things don't all sag down too much to the bottom.

Best way to get garlic well adapted to your local climate is to buy it from somebody's roadside stand or local farmers market.

If you are on rock, I would suggest starting NOW with a vigorous composting program on as large a scale as you can possibly stand Keep the potentially-weedy stuff like horse manure and stall cleanings separate from the basically-clean stuff like chicken poo and coop cleanings, so that you can use the potentially-weedy stuff for deeper layers and the probably-fairly-clean stuff at the top of beds.

Have fun!

Pat