True Garlic Seed

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I have started removing bulbils from garlic flowers. This year I am focusing on the newly imported garlics that have been known to produce true seeds in other gardens. I intend to leave them in the field rather than putting them in a bucket of water. I am also removing bulbils from a few garlics in the general population.

The bulbils from PI 540319, formed large single round cloves that will be ideal for growing into a large bulb next growing season. I haven't dug them yet, so I expect to provide more details later.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

As another follow up to the yellowing garlic concern. My brother obtained a huge amount of compost from the same company/feedlot as I did and added it to his garden. He is reporting it as the worst garden he has ever grown.

[richardw]

Got to be careful where you get you get your compost from,ive known a few people in this area who have brought composted pig shit&straw and have had very poor crops from there potatoes,i think that its because grain farmers spray growth inhibiter's on the crops,the straw is then used as bedding in the pig sheds before been mounded up and composted,the composting must concentrate the residues in the straw,i wouldn't touch the stuff myself.

[raymondo]

Apparently, although hot composting can render quite a few chemicals safe for the garden, there are a number of chemicals which are unaffected by bacterial action. These are chemicals with long carbon chains resembling cellulose. They need much longer working fungal action to be rendered inert. A compost pile with such chemicals needs to be left quietly for two years after having been inoculated with appropriate fungi. Joseph, you probably understand this better than I do given your chemistry background.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jul 13, 2013 16:32:30 GMT -5 raymondo said:

Joseph, you probably understand this better than I do given your chemistry background.

You have inadvertently drawn my attention to a curious thing about the pesticide registration studies that I was conducting... Perhaps it was the nature of my laboratory as a contract lab, but we only conducted short term studies. We sprayed pesticides on a crop, or fed them to rats, and followed the degradation of the chemicals until harvest. Sure we documented how much of the pesticide ended up in the soil, and the air, and the water, and in what forms. But we didn't follow through and grow a second crop in the same soil. We didn't compost the stalks. It was enough to say, "30% ended up in the straw." And since straw isn't eaten by humans it could be ignored.

I believe that the pesticide residues in bedding and feed, and the antibiotics fed to the cattle may have long-term detrimental effects to any compost made from feed-lot manure. I also don't trust leaf-mulch that is made with leaves or clippings collected from residential areas. Suburbanites are the most reckless of any class of users regarding pesticides. And compost made from sewer sludge has gotta be super-unhealthy for soil.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I have modified my technique for removing bulbils. This year I have a lot more garlics that have hundreds of flowers in them. Last year my technique was to rip open the husk around the flowers and bulbils and pop bulbils out with my fingernail. That still works great for flowers with larger bulbils.

For the stems with hundreds of flowers and tiny bulbils my technique is about like this:

Rip off the husk from around the flower cluster. I am doing this at a fairly early stage.
Leave it alone for a few days so that the flowers decompress.
Take the back side of a dull thick bladed pocket knife and gouge out (vertically) about 10 degrees of the flowers and bulbils.
Comb the flowers and bulbils towards the gouge with the tip of the blade. Bulbils pop out. Shake as needed. About 1/2 to 2/3 of the flower stems survive.
Come back in 2 to 3 days and pop out any individual bulbils that I missed the first time.

[steev]

Twenty years ago, the best soil amendment available to me was composted sewage sludge; cheapest, and best particle size. People got concerned about heavy metals, for which the municipal sewage plant wouldn't test every batch (they never found any serious traces); the result was that they stopped selling it retail. Since then, it's all gone straight to commercial agriculture. So I can't put it under your sod lawn, but it can be used to grow your lettuce. I'm really not saying you shouldn't enjoy salad, but that there is an "out-of-sight, out-of-mind" thing here that makes no sense.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I dug one bed of the GRIN garlic last week. I attempted to dig the other bed, but it was planted in rocky soil, and the bulbils were smaller than the pebbles, so I couldn't find them. So I left the stakes in the garden and will let them grow in place for another year. I may post photos later. Great working weather today, so I'm not fussing with photos.

[steev]

Your mention of pesticide/antibiotic residues in feed-lot manure goes right to why I won't use it on a bet, nor a beet.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Jul 29, 2013 9:51:02 GMT -5 Joseph Lofthouse said:

I may post photos later. Great working weather today, so I'm not fussing with photos.

I forgot to take my phone/camera to work with me today. I must have reached into my pocket a dozen times to take a photo of something in the garden. I take lots of photos while I'm gardening. Hardly ever post them though. What's that got to do with garlic? The garlic flowers are blooming. Some of them have the coveted purple anthers. I wanted to take photos of the pollinators: They were small wasps about 9 mm long. They look like the same wasps that are all over the carrot flowers. Might be nice next year to put the garlic seed bed, and the carrot seed bed, and the radish seed bed next to each other.

The Rocambole flower stalks dried up and turned brown before the flowers opened. Last fall I saved bulbs from any plant that looked like it produced swollen ovaries. This summer there are not any Rocambole types among the bulbs that I saved. Most of the saved bulbs produced flower stalks this summer that are around 4 to 5 feet tall.

Many of the garlics that are currently flowering have lots of green leaves still, so it looks like there is plenty of energy left to feed the flower stalk. I should take a notepad and marker to the garden with me. It would be nice to be able to tell later why I took a photo, or what it was about.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I added photos of the harvested bulbils to the page where I posted the other photos of GRIN bulbils and plants. PI 540319 was the most vigorous grower. W6 26171 and Z058 grew decently. The other 3 seem iffy.

The garlic seed patchs are currently flowering.




Punuk was releasing lots of yellow pollen today. Brushed it onto my finger and onto other flowers.

[steev]

So far, I have returned sprouts:

Z058 x6
W626171 x1
PI1540319 x1
PI540357 x1
PI540316 x0
PI540337 x0

[samyaza]

I can't realize you managed to get such a perfect cluster. I keep my fingers crossed, in hope you'll find your way back in time, milleniums ago, to correct one of the most serious agronomic aberrations of history. You are on a sacred mission. Just keep up !

[Joseph Lofthouse]

samyaza: Thank you for mentioning that. It does feel like a sacred mission to me: A legacy that I can leave to the world that will continue after I am gone.

I tear apart hundreds of garlic flower stalks per year. From time to time one of them looks really nice after I am done. This year about half of them failed almost immediately. I have about 90 survivors today that look like they might still have the potential of producing a seed. They have finished flowering, so now I am waiting to see if the ovaries swell up. Some of the plants that are starting to produce swollen ovaries still have 3 green leaves and a green stalk. There might be some extra energy there to mature seeds.

This year I am saving each bulb with it's flower stalk. If any bulbs produce seeds I'm intending to replant those specific bulbs.

[swamper]

Thanks for posting the pictures. The 8 I am trying look nothing like that. Perhaps they are "immediate failures" but at this stage I will continue to let them mature and see what happens. The process is taking longer than I thought it would.