True Garlic Seed

[PatrickW]

It'll be interesting to compare notes with everyone. In particular, I'm looking for rust resistance...

[ilex]

Nov 1, 2013 16:00:25 GMT -5 PatrickW said:

It'll be interesting to compare notes with everyone. In particular, I'm looking for rust resistance...

You are not alone, I dream with a rust resistant garlic. Another twist would be a short/medium day garlic so it can bulb properly before rust comes. That would probably work in mild climates like mine.

[PatrickW]

I'm sharing the garlic and seeds with:

Kees who is a local garlic farmer. He grows tens of thousands of plants, and hundreds of varieties. If he's successful with seeds, we should get some interesting genetics from him, through cross pollination.

Søren (known here as 'toad') who lives in Denmark. He is a member of the Danish seed savers, which has hundreds of members now, and will no doubt get some interest from this. Unlike Ilex, he has a short growing season, and a harsh winter climate. His summer has very long days, and very short days in the winter, so he's likely to have problems getting the seed heads to mature on the plants without intervention.

Radu is a professional plant breeder in Belgium. He has access to a plant lab. While full embryo rescue is too expensive, too much work and requires access to restricted plant hormones we are unable to buy here, he's going to experiment with some techniques he hopes will improve rates of germination of the seeds.

We live in interesting times!

[raymondo]

It's great to see TGS spreading out like this. Diversity in plants, diversity in growers!

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Good to see the new participants attempting to grow true garlic seed!

Some months ago I harvested the GRIN garlic bulbs that were planted as bulbils last fall. I have stored them in the refrigerator since that time. Yesterday I planted them into the garden. It seems late to me to be planting garlic, but it's as soon as the field was properly prepared for planting. I stored them in the refrigerator since harvest because of that paper that suggested that storing garlic at cool temperatures before planting encourages flowering.

I planted a row about 35 feet long with the entire harvest of PI 540319. It is the accession that grew the largest bulbs for me. Some of them were multi-cloved (3 cloves). I found one seed among the dried up flowers with the bulbils. I planted about 10 to 15 bulbs of the other 5 grin varieties. (The biggest from each kind). Planted in alphabetical order starting on the west end of the row.

I also planted the rest of my garlic yesterday, and a few days before. I only planted 3 rows of these kinds this year: A few cloves from bulbs that appear to be part of the purple-stripe or marbled-purple-stripe groups, or from parents that had purple anthers, or from varieties that have produced seeds in other gardens. I'm intending the patch only as a breeding patch, not for market. I also planted a (very) few cloves of non-bolting and non-seeding types for the purpose of variety preservation. I had some California softnecked and creole garlics that formed scapes this summer. The California garlic formed large bulbils. I replanted those bulbils: to see if there is an epigenetic-bolting trait that can be passed on from the bulbils. The creole scapes died before flowering or forming bulbils. I didn't outright discard all of the non-seeding garlic, but I severely limited the amount planted. I didn't refrigerate these bulbs.

[steev]

I must compare PI numbers of those you sent me, to see how they're doing.

[richardw]

Great news,seed i got from Ivan which has spent 2 months in the fridge was sown yesterday,there were two seeds with green shoots,now that they are in soil/compost mix its all finger crossed that they grow.

[richardw]

The weather has been rather damp over the last few days so i thought a good time to transfer all of want has germinated so far,there's five seedlings and these have now been put into two large pots,plans are that these pots will stay outside for the summer then go inside my tunnelhouse for the coming winter even though they would still be ok outside, i dont want to take any chances.

[templeton]

well done, richard.

[richardw]

The five seedlings are now down to four but the fourth one is only just hanging in,the other three now have there second leaf and are bolting away,so i could say i'm past the crucial stage of shock from the transplanting into large pots.

[richardw]

This is my first year ever growing hard neck garlic so i'm surprised to find that what were sown as bulbils had grown into small bulbs instead of rounds which i as told to expect.I'll be planting these back in again in about 3 months to try and get them to produce seed.

[meganp]

looking really good Richard:)

[Joseph Lofthouse]

I planted garlic seeds according to the winter-sown method in late winter.

[Joseph Lofthouse]

Here's photos of what my garlic (seed production) bed looks like today compared to what they looked like one year ago tomorrow. This year's plants are more precocious. I speculate that it may be partly due to not digging the bulbs last fall, but leaving them in the ground. The weather may also be milder this spring. I am hyped about the garlic being more precocious this year. That may allow them to flower in cooler temperatures that I expect would lead to better odds of setting seed. This is the patch growing on the north side of a building.

Varieties imported into my garden in the 2013 growing season that are known to have produced seeds in other gardens.

2013


2014



The mixed varieties of garlic that I have been growing for years...
2013


2014. There is a wooden stake on the right side of the photo marking a row of cloves from the plant that come closest to producing true seeds during the 2013 growing season.

[richardw]

So did you plant on the north side of the building so they were in a cooler spot for flowering