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Post by paquebot on May 26, 2012 15:01:36 GMT -5
Other than the Music project, anything left in the ground invariably becomes a mess. Twice I cleaned out about a 4x25 plot of mixed walking onions and garlic. Twice it came back twice as thick. It will be cleaned out again this fall and I will have the stinkiest compost tumbler for awhile when the onion and garlic tops begin heating up!
Even when doing propagation projects from bulbils, the small rounds were sifted out after the plants went dormant. That was to cure them and give them a proper dormancy period before planting back in the fall. In the case of Estonian Red, I received bulbils about the size of a wheat kernel. The results were pea-size rounds. Planted back, got marble-size. Planted again, 1"-1ΒΌ" divided bulbs. Those cloves resulted in proper bulbs.
Martin
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Post by mnjrutherford on May 26, 2012 15:05:32 GMT -5
hmmmmm... very interesting.... Tell me... Walking onions propagate by developing bulbils, bending over (so to speak), and the bulbils start to grow, correct? Assuming you are nodding your head and saying, "yea", would garlic do the same?
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Post by paquebot on May 26, 2012 17:30:13 GMT -5
Not nodding, shaking! Walking onions produce topsets, not bulbils. Walking onions do "walk" by toppling over and the sets then take root. Garlic could do the same but it would be a potential suicide. If there were several hundred bulbils, as in some varieties, there would be too much competition for nutrients and water. That could be almost fatal as there would not again be another set of bulbils produced there for a long time, if ever.
Martin
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Post by mnjrutherford on May 26, 2012 18:21:21 GMT -5
So there is a difference between topsets and bulbils... hmmmm... ok... We have a weed plant here that we think is called "wild garlic". The leaves are round tubes that are "ribbed" up and down. There are not additional "leaves". It develops a sheathed "swelling" at the top that dries and opens to reveal little purple "bulbs" that sprout little green shoots. Are you familiar with this member of the alium family?
I've been told that it's edible, but I tried eating the root ends and it's got no flavor to speak of and the fibrous texture is very unpleasant. Perhaps the tops are the more edible portion?
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Post by oxbowfarm on May 26, 2012 18:32:18 GMT -5
Well, I thought it was Music. What can you really know about a garlic? We were making tabbouleh so I pulled one for green garlic and took a pic, you can see the secondary stems emerging a little better.  |
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Post by paquebot on May 27, 2012 20:33:17 GMT -5
That is weird! Doesn't appear to be caused by damage and it does has the typical Music scape with the long beak on the umbel sheath. In fact, that's how I can tell what most of my volunteer junk is in the area where the Music experiment was. Did a walk-through the lower field today and still few scapes and nothing very strange. I'll definitely keep watching for that.
Martin
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Post by mnjrutherford on May 28, 2012 3:13:14 GMT -5
As Alfred the Hedgehog would say, "This is serious mysterious!" The background cloth makes it a lot easier to see the anomaly Ox, thanks for retaking the photo.
Is it possible that the cloves had dried out over a longer period of time? I've read that the heads should not be broken into cloves until immediately prior to planting. Is this a possibility?
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Post by paquebot on May 28, 2012 23:23:09 GMT -5
When the bulb is exploded shouldn't matter. For a number of years I sent out garlic in the form of loose cloves. Some companies that sell by weight also will send broken bulbs. We ordered 8 ounces of something from Territorial several years ago and there weren't more than any 3 cloves connected. Never has been a problem.
Martin
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jun 12, 2012 21:07:05 GMT -5
Update. Most of the "Music" has this going on to one degree or another. I've noticed that the ones I left the primary scape on seem to have much less than the majority of plants which had the scapes removed. Most of the plants have small scapes emerging from the secondary shoots. I'll try and post a pic.
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Post by mnjrutherford on Jun 14, 2012 19:00:03 GMT -5
You know, secondary scapes, if the quality matches the first, would not be a bad thing particularly if there is a market for them in your area. I hope you are taking notes on this progression. It's fascinating to say the very least.
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Post by oxbowfarm on Jun 21, 2012 6:15:49 GMT -5
I've pulled a couple and dissected them. What is happening is they appear to be creating bulbs within bulbs. The secondary stalks are forming from the center of secondary bulbs within separate wrappers with a few slightly smaller than normal cloves inside. All of this coming directly off the basal plate adjacent to the original scape/stalk. The two that I've dissected had all the secondary bulbs clustered on one side of the stalk. No signs of disease, nematode, etc. Just appears to be an oddity that I've propogated. I'll try and take some good pics of this, so far I haven't been able to create a pic with a decent view of what I'm seeing.
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Post by mnjrutherford on Jun 21, 2012 9:14:08 GMT -5
There has got to be a genetic answer to the issue. I'm wondering ... because garlic is a clone... IF you plant these you "SHOULD" get the same issue...  But, would you WANT to do that? Or should you just get new seed of this variety? |
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Post by littleminnie on Jun 27, 2012 19:58:45 GMT -5
I don't think this requires its own thread. Onion oddity  |
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Post by bluelacedredhead on Jul 10, 2012 9:35:52 GMT -5
The largest garlic in my garden this year produced a scape which (to my knowledge) went straight from sending up a scape to a flowerhead. I honestly do not recall it having bulbils? Could it be the timing with the heatwave that caused this?
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Post by 12540dumont on Jul 10, 2012 13:40:54 GMT -5
I had many of those garlic oddities this year.
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But, would you WANT to do that? Or should you just get new seed of this variety?
