Should my garlic be up?

[NwMtGardener]

Hrmmmm, you shouldnt feel responsible at all...unless you did what i did to my DH grandma...

Apparently the peony that i gave her died. So of course being a grandma who loves to garden, she feels badly about it. So i had to tell the WHOLE story. Last summer i found out that the ranch foreman where i worked had, the previous fall, "weeded" an old flower bed by digging it all up with a giant tractor. The whole pile of dirt, weeds and plants was dumped and sat over winter. So i find it, find some plants growing, and "rescue" them. But i dont have room for peonies. So i pot them up and sorta torture them for a few months, then load them in the car for 12 hour road trip. After which i leave them in said car at like 120* with no water until ALMOST dead, but not quite. Then i gift them to my grandmother-in-law.

Annnnnd its definitely not your fault that my husband mowed over their "area" yesterday despite me telling him not to mow there!!!

But i definitely think even in spite of that, they're going to come up and do fine. I'm optimistic about anything tuberous, hard to kill those suckers...

Of course...there were those peonies...

 

[momofdrew]

I dunno about the jerusalem artichokes...i unwisely plunked them down in the lawn by our driveway, and thought i would see some shoots or something by now. Since i've never grown it i dunno what i'm looking for, but i thought something sunflower-ish??

This is what mine look like a week after planting them, hope it helps.
http://www.theeasygarden.com/forum/uploads/8829_sam_1130.jpg

Oh my goodness TMC is that the soil you have to grow in??? it looks like very clayish..

 

[thistlebloom]

Hrmmmm, you shouldnt feel responsible at all...unless you did what i did to my DH grandma...

Apparently the peony that i gave her died. So of course being a grandma who loves to garden, she feels badly about it. So i had to tell the WHOLE story. Last summer i found out that the ranch foreman where i worked had, the previous fall, "weeded" an old flower bed by digging it all up with a giant tractor. The whole pile of dirt, weeds and plants was dumped and sat over winter. So i find it, find some plants growing, and "rescue" them. But i dont have room for peonies. So i pot them up and sorta torture them for a few months, then load them in the car for 12 hour road trip. After which i leave them in said car at like 120* with no water until ALMOST dead, but not quite. Then i gift them to my grandmother-in-law.

Annnnnd its definitely not your fault that my husband mowed over their "area" yesterday despite me telling him not to mow there!!!

But i definitely think even in spite of that, they're going to come up and do fine. I'm optimistic about anything tuberous, hard to kill those suckers...

Of course...there were those peonies...

Ha! Maybe you're just testing her gardening skills!

 

[The Mama Chicken]

Oh my goodness TMC is that the soil you have to grow in??? it looks like very clayish..

Yeah, clayish is a nice word for it. We just broke ground for the garden in Feb. and it used to be a hay field. It is pretty fertile and there are tons of worms, but the texture is not great yet. Hopefully a couple of years of gardening will fix it up. It doesn't help that hubby just used a fork to dig it out of the path and dumped it on top of the bed without breaking it up any, by the time I got ready to plant the clumps had dried into something the constancy of bricks. Luckily the JAs don't seem to mind one tiny bit.

 

[thistlebloom]

So, I had 6 garlic plants survive the tilling and 5 of those are growing nicely. Now they are forming scapes, and I can never remember which way it is - do I cut the scapes for bigger bulbs, or leave them on for better storage.

Not that I'm going to need to worry about storage for my huge harvest...

 

[NwMtGardener]

I was wondering about your garlic, thistle, when I dug up one of my varieties the other night. The other two varieties just didn't look as ready, so they're still in the ground. But mine looks good, I'm really excited about it since it's my first time growing it! Now I have a spot along my front walk to plant something else!

BTW, I definitely have jerusalem artichokes they're a good 3' tall now, I'm sure I'll be overrun by next year!!!

 

[thistlebloom]

Woo-hoo! I'm glad the JA made it through the winter!

 

[catjac1975]

Compost, compost, compost.

Oh my goodness TMC is that the soil you have to grow in??? it looks like very clayish..

Yeah, clayish is a nice word for it. We just broke ground for the garden in Feb. and it used to be a hay field. It is pretty fertile and there are tons of worms, but the texture is not great yet. Hopefully a couple of years of gardening will fix it up. It doesn't help that hubby just used a fork to dig it out of the path and dumped it on top of the bed without breaking it up any, by the time I got ready to plant the clumps had dried into something the constancy of bricks. Luckily the JAs don't seem to mind one tiny bit.

 

[thistlebloom]

So, now that it's scaping, do I just leave the scapes on, or should I remove them?

 

[NwMtGardener]

I took mine off and ate them, chopped them up & used them instead of green onions on salad or sauteed. they're pretty yummy