Zach's Walk

[kazedwards]

Picked my first strawberry today. It was somewhat bitter and pretty small. First of many I'm sure. Also have most the beds ready and will be planting out soon if the wind calms down soon and let's me finish hardening off the plants. Corn will be planted same time as the tomatoes and peppers too.

[kazedwards]

The strawberries are really starting to come in now.


I have several large bulbils on the walking onions too. I'll post more about that in the walking onion thread.

[kazedwards]

I have a few garlic that I had missed last year when harvesting. They must have been very small last year because they didn't divide and are huge this season.
The forgotten garlic

Here is the garlic I planted last fall.

Both pictures are from today.

[kazedwards]

Last weekend I got everything prepped to plant out the tomatoes. Was hopping to get them in the ground on Monday but it rained all day and half the day Tuesday. Hope to start Thursday morning if it drys out more. I didn't realize how much space I was giving to tomatoes until I put the stakes out. I might have gone a little over board this year.

This is the main part of the garden as of last night. The big square is going to be corn. It is 15x15. Hopfully I can get something out of it.

Here is the field. Left of the compost is new this year. Right of the compost is going to be for the peppers.

These are from this morning. Sunflowers that had volunteered in the main garden. I transplanted them to a more out of the way spot.

Garlic

One of the forgotten garlics from last year. The stake cages are five feet. This garlic is getting huge!

Plants that came from true garlic seed. Only two survived the winter.

These are potato onions that are from seed on the left. The right is garlic from reed.

And the walking onions today.

Here is the current batch of TGS. Over twenty have come up last time I counted.

[philagardener]

Looks like you are off to a great start, kazedwards !

[kazedwards]

May 19, 2016 8:56:44 GMT -5 toomanyirons said:

Is your main planting of garlic all the Chesnok Red variety?  How many umbels do you tinker with to get true seed?

Yes all of the main garlic is Chesnok red. That is all I grew up until Reed sent me bulbils from his last fall.

I remove the bulbils out of any umbel that have flowers. The last two years it has been all of them. This year I plan on doing the same. I wait until the umbels open on there own and will remove them at my own pace. Sometimes it will be a week or more after they open before I start removing bulbils. It's hard to tell the difference between the flowers and bulbils right after they open too. They are both white to light green. Once they are exposed to sun light they get some color.

[kazedwards]

Planted 35 tomatoes this weekend. I still have 39 peppers to go. Also need to plant corn, beans, and melons. Some of the tomatoes were smaller than I wanted them to be but they will catch up. I may have gone a little over board this year.

[steev]

I think I go overboard every year; the envelope must be pushed, or it suffocates.

[kazedwards]

We had a storm come through and just downpour on us. There was a lot of flash flooding and wind. I had one tomato that was under an inch of water. I lifted it and mounded it up once the rain calmed down. Also dug a small trench for drainage. I also had my only Amish Paste tomato get snapped at the base. I brought the top of the plant in and will try to root it like a lateral. I know it is a long shot but thought it was worth a try. They are calling for rain everyday for the rest of the week too. I hope it doesn't drowned them.


-Zach

[kazedwards]

Well right now it is storming again. I hope the rest of the tomatoes are surviving. The Amish Paste seems to be coming back. I have it in water hoping to root it and plant it back out in a few weeks.

toomanyirons landrace is doing great. I have 5 plants from it.

Garlic is doing good too.

The garlic from TGS is starting to take off as well. I might get actual bulbs this year.

I still can't get over how vigorous the volunteered garlic is doing. They are much bigger than the fall planted garlic. I am still surprised that they didn't divide and wonder why. I harvested the garlic late, due to seed, so the heads were pretty lose. So I guess they could have been a clove that broke off when I was lifting them.

[kazedwards]

May 26, 2016 10:10:38 GMT -5 toomanyirons said:

kazedwards stated: "I still can't get over how vigorous the volunteered garlic is doing. They are much bigger than the fall planted garlic. I am still surprised that they didn't divide and wonder why. I harvested the garlic late, due to seed, so the heads were pretty lose. So I guess they could have been a clove that broke off when I was lifting them."

Last year I had many bulbs develop what I call "basal" rounds (someone please correct me regarding the proper terminology) underground on both the German Brown and Spanish Roja Rocamboles.  At harvest time I found 1-5 mature rounds clustered around many of the primary mature cloved garlic bulbs, quantity 1 round being far more common than multiple rounds per bulb.  Rounds varied in size from 1/4 inch diameter up to 1 3/4 inch diameter, the size being directly related to the quantity (the more rounds produced, the smaller the size of the rounds).  This round development occurred in plantings in several gardens.  Last year I did not fertilize any garlic so that could not have been a causal factor (I have heard that high phosphorous may promote such development).  This basal round development has occurred here in the past only rarely, my finding perhaps two or three per year and never any on the GBs until last year.  The basal rounds look no different than rounds that develop from planted umbel bulbils.  Last season I harvested around 50-60 of these rounds and replanted them last fall as part of my main crop.  Plants from my replanted "seed" rounds are doing great, I expect them to develop fully cloved bulbs.

My point is that, just like you, I have lots of volunteer garlic growing where I had garlic beds last year.  I never harvest that sloppily so I know I did not miss harvesting any of the mature cloved bulbs, plus the majority of the volunteers are single stem plants.  These volunteers are coming from basal rounds that I missed, not cloved bulbs.  Plants are very healthy, and very large.  I wonder if you had the same thing occur.  If you had missed harvesting some cloved bulbs, this year's volunteers would obviously be multi-stemmed.  Have you ever found rounds next to the primary cloved bulbs during harvest?  They are easy to miss, especially if a person is not expecting to find them, and with the outer wrapper taking on the color of the soil.

I also wonder if those oversize plants might somehow be a benefit to you regarding your true seed production efforts (larger umbels, fewer/larger bulbils, larger/more flowers than usual, etc).  Please make some observations when the time comes and report here, this is something that I would really like to know about.  I will try to do same with mine, although I have serious doubts of any success trying to get true seed from my roke strains.

For the last few years I have planted all that I harvested with the exception of this year. I will have large plants and small plants. The small plants will have bulbs 1/2-3/4" wide. They are always split bulbs with 5-7 cloves that are very small. The normal size plants are 1 1/2-2" wide with 8-12 cloves. The flowers heads are just as different in size. Small plants will have maybe 20 bulbils and the same amount of flowers. Large plants have perhaps 100 flowers/bulbils. I have never had the fall planted cloves form a round. As the garlic flowers it starts to die down. I leave it in the ground so the flowers can be pollinated, swell and start to dry down. By the time the seed heads have dried down enough to bring in its around September. That's when I pull the garlic up. The smaller plants have died down completely and are hidden by weeds at that point making it harder to find. So the volunteer plants could easily be one of the smaller plants. Also the outer papery wrapper is very deteriorated by then making the cloves very loosely held together. A lot of times the bulbs fall apart when I'm harvesting. I also typically pull the garlic a week or two after I bring the heads in. So it is very possible that I had missed those plants when harvesting or lost a clove or round. This spring I did have a few volunteer plants that were divided and growing in clusters. I pulled those and didn't let them stay.

[reed]

What do you mean by "rounds"? When it forms just a single more onion looking bulb rather than a clump of cloves? What I call a clump is a central stem with several cloves around it, more or less like you would see from the store. Maybe I should study up on proper garlic terminology. I found my garlic at the site of an old pioneer homestead and never paid it much attention till I found this forum. I'v been taking better care of it last couple of years and noticed some flowers on it last year but got no seeds.

[kazedwards]

I have no idea what the time to harvest market garlic around here is. I isn't a major crop in this area.

Scapes develop around early June here too. I think daylight hours are what trigger the plant to produce it. Which would make sense as to why scapes are produced the same time every year. Also makes sense that small and large plants produce scapes at the same time.

I'm not sure what a basal round is either? I know what the basal plate is on garlic but that is all my garlic gives me. It's just a cluster of roots attached to the scape.

[kazedwards]

I just noticed that my garlic is starting to produce scapes.

[philagardener]

May 27, 2016 1:07:44 GMT -5 kazedwards said:

I have no idea what the time to harvest market garlic around here is. I isn't a major crop in this area.

I harvest then about 1/3rd of the leaves have died back (starting from the bottom). If you wait after that, you will not have good wrappers and the heads won't store as well.