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Post by philagardener on Jul 23, 2014 12:42:44 GMT -5
My guess is your varietes aren't right for your conditions. This seems to have been my experience too. For the first few years I tried store bought garlic, as well as named varieties from suppliers who grow in other parts of the country, and got back small bulbs (if I was lucky!). Then I picked up a locally adapted variety from a farmer's market and that has done well for me. It is a mild-tasting hardneck; my only regret is that it doesn't store more than a few months.   |
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Post by blueadzuki on Jul 23, 2014 14:22:50 GMT -5
My guess is your varietes aren't right for your conditions. This seems to have been my experience too. For the first few years I tried store bought garlic, as well as named varieties from suppliers who grow in other parts of the country, and got back small bulbs (if I was lucky!). Then I picked up a locally adapted variety from a farmer's market and that has done well for me. It is a mild-tasting hardneck; my only regret is that it doesn't store more than a few months. I'd accept that, except all (or nearly all) of my garlic stock DID come from the local farmers market, or at least alocal farmers market (the supermarket stuff is usually the stuff that never grows AT ALL). . nearly all of it came from stands at the weekly FM at Union Square in Manhattan (nearly everything else came from a health Co-op in Nanuet, which also sources locally over the summer), and (assuming everyone is following the rules) that means it HAS to have been grown within 100 miles of Manhattan, which is as close to local as I can probably get (I'm suburban remember, so even those farmers markets stands that set up more locally have thier actual farms a few hours away. Land here isn't usually cheap enough to set up a farm any closer. So it all should ALREADY be adapated to the area, unless the climate is so patchy here that 50 or so miles can make that much of a difference. Plus there were perfectly decent looking bulbs being sold right next to the iffy ones I bought; I just thought I could grow the little ones up (since no one wants the little stuff to eat, I tend to get it for a lot less money than the "good stuff") More fool me. I guess that one is probably just crapply genes. Funny you mentioned garlic greens, that was sort of what I was thinking. Garlic bulbs are comparitively cheap (at least, for the moment). But green garlic is pretty pricy, especially when you use as much as I do (I LOVE stir fried green garlic with Chinese Bacon)So maybe that is my garlic fate, to plant it wait till it gets as big as it can, pull it chop off the bottoms and save them (even if I get no big bulbs, most of them make a big enough round by season end they are at least re-plantable. And at lest they are well enouh dapated for that (a lot of the supermarket stuff took so long that taking the greens at any point meant the end of the whole plant) cook the greens, and count myself lucky I get something. But if greens is all I ever get, there is a part of me that thinks the space would better be served with lots of garlic chives. Same flavor but a lot more greens (though actual green garlic works better for the stir fry, Garlic chives usually don't get soft enough.) Two final points 1. I actually got a little new material today. I managed to get a normal sized head a union square that still had its scape, so I'll see how that does (both halves) 2. Since the wild alliums seem to perform close to normal, oever the winter I'm planting a worldwide edible allium seed cocktail (don't ask me for a species list, I've forgotten half of what went in) over the winter (seed means allium hair, and that usually doesn't last outside over the winter) Some wild Californian stuff, some Trans-Caucasian and that weird one from the mountains of South Africa. Between all of them, SOMETHING has to like it here! |
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Post by Joseph Lofthouse on Jul 23, 2014 16:56:48 GMT -5
At my farmer's market I sell garlic for planting. The price is double the price of nice large bulbs for eating. The selected bulbs represent the most productive 10% of the garlic that I harvest from my garden: The largest and best that I am capable of growing. It upsets me a lot when people buy the planting garlic with the intention of eating it!!!! Gives me opportunity to practice my calming exercises. Gee. I'm all upset just writing about it...
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Post by 12540dumont on Jul 24, 2014 18:39:04 GMT -5
OMG Eating the planting stock. Shocking. Simply shocking.
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Post by steev on Jul 27, 2014 23:34:23 GMT -5
Yes, well, we know what we think is what and can only rarely find our understanding shared, generally by a very select group, such as come to this forum and find it sympatico; surely, it was ever thus and it is unlikely to change.
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Post by philagardener on Jul 28, 2014 7:00:31 GMT -5
Verily!
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Post by flowerweaver on Jul 28, 2014 9:20:10 GMT -5
That's when you raise the price on the planting garlic even higher. When you find out someone really intends to plant it you cut them a deal! Then you can feel kind and not upset.
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Post by kazedwards on Sept 16, 2014 20:32:00 GMT -5
Ok, so I was digging up the rest of the onions and garlic today. I know I am WAY late on the garlic and probably the onions too. But onions were still green and have been all summer. The garlic I have just been lazy. Anyway the one garlic that I pulled had already sprouted. Should I still pull them and store them for a month or two or just seperate the cloves and transplant? I know we can still eat them but will they last in the fridge?
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Post by steev on Sept 16, 2014 23:16:38 GMT -5
Bet they last better in the ground.
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Post by kazedwards on Sept 17, 2014 1:01:53 GMT -5
That's what I was thinking too but I am worried that it is too early for having growing garlic in the ground.
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Post by steev on Sept 17, 2014 4:21:19 GMT -5
Had it been growing naturally in the ground, it wouldn't have been uprooted at all. It would have been dormant, in its natural cycle, and started sprouting when it seemed appropriate. Granted, we try to get plants to do what works for us, but they mostly know what works for them.
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Post by Al on Sept 17, 2014 17:28:54 GMT -5
When I first grew garlic I planted in Spring which produced fairly small bulbs. Since then I have planted earlier & earlier with better results.
When on holiday in France one year I saw the most fantastic garlic at a farmers market, the grower confided that he planted in September. So, I have tried to follow his advice ever since.
Some of my stored 'seed' garlic has started to send out little fresh roots (mid-Sept.), so I guess the dormant period is over for the onion tribe. It wants to grow, now.
In the last couple of weeks I have planted a Babington leek bulb which has roots showing out the bottom of the pot already, same with some leek offset bulbs I found attached to an old plant someone was throwing away. Also rakkyo is sprouting, & Allium roseum, Allium moly, A. cepa Perutile etc.
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Post by kazedwards on Sept 17, 2014 21:20:04 GMT -5
Ok so it might help to an advantage. I might get a few new bulbs just in case. A new variety would be fun.
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Post by blueadzuki on Sept 18, 2014 21:39:18 GMT -5
When I first grew garlic I planted in Spring which produced fairly small bulbs. Since then I have planted earlier & earlier with better results. When on holiday in France one year I saw the most fantastic garlic at a farmers market, the grower confided that he planted in September. So, I have tried to follow his advice ever since. Some of my stored 'seed' garlic has started to send out little fresh roots (mid-Sept.), so I guess the dormant period is over for the onion tribe. It wants to grow, now. In the last couple of weeks I have planted a Babington leek bulb which has roots showing out the bottom of the pot already, same with some leek offset bulbs I found attached to an old plant someone was throwing away. Also rakkyo is sprouting, & Allium roseum, Allium moly, A. cepa Perutile etc. A few days ago I made a discovery in my seed drawer that was both good and bad. While rummaging around trying to find one of my vials, I discovered a leaking packet that turned out to be my saved bulbs of Naples garlic (allium neapolitanum) I had known I had saved some bulbs of this, but as I had seen none in what I harvested this year, I had assumed they had all either been tosses out when I went through all my allium bulbs at planting and tossed out any that were spoiled (I tossed out a lot then) or had simply not grown. Turns out I never put them IN in the first place! So I have one more species left to add to next year's mix. The find is somewhat tempered however by the fact that, after spending two years in my drawer most of the bulbs actually WERE spoiled and no good. I think out of the 40-50 I found only 4-5 were and are actually still sound. All the rest either dried out completely or sprouted in the drawer and then consumed themselves to death. So I only have a little of that left too. On the other hand, given how little I have of most of them now, if a lot had survived they'd probably have dominated the patch and smother everything else that is left. BTW since you grow Rakkyo (like me) and are fall plant it, have you ever had trouble with some of them "pulling a crocus"? That is forgoing making any leaves at all and going straight to making a flower stalk. One or two of mine have done this; mostly in the newer strain. Directly from the bulb a flower bud emerges (that's another thing, unlike the umbels of flowers A.chinense normally puts out, these bulbs only make one; again, sort of like a crocus). This is not good for me (the flower does not normally get pollinated by anything (since more often than not it shows up in the middle of December or January, when there are no bugs) and the effort of making the flower usually exhausts the bulb so bad it can't make leaves later.) |
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Post by paquebot on Sept 18, 2014 23:19:55 GMT -5
For many years, planted garlic only in the spring since that's how everyone else around here did. What I discovered was an amazing way that some varieties survive. I only had the one which later became Martin's Heirloom. What we often found was a bulb with perhaps half of the cloves dried up and dead in the spring. What was happening is that the energy of a weak clove was being absorbed by the others. When that one was used up, the next weakest was raided until there was just one left. Survival of the fittest is not just for higher life!
Martin
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