|
Post by reed on Sept 7, 2017 2:56:33 GMT -5
I haven't stopped to look at them close but a lot bulbils I threw out the window along the gravel road back to my house last year made small scapes full of new bulbils this year. Well, except for those in range of the county mowing crew. Gonna put more out soon only this time I'm gonna walk so I can target spots out of range of the mowers.
I can't afford to devote much space to garlic and all I want is enough for us so I'm just gonna let it go wild, pretty sure I can. If I ever notice it declining too much I'll bring some home and pamper it for a while.
|
|
|
Post by walt on Sept 7, 2017 15:54:50 GMT -5
My family farmed owned about 400 acres and rented about the same when I was young. One landlord was a widow who had a house on 160 acres, We rented most of that, all but a few acres around her house. She had lots of garlic. My family had no experience with garlic before meeting this woman. She didn't garden at all when I knew, though there had been a garden by the house I could tell. But her garlic wasn't in the old garden. It was in an area that may have never been tilled, between her house and barn. Native grasses and weeds were high, and the garlic could seldom be seen, unless you walked out into that area. All she used the garlic for was, she collected a bunch of bulbils, topsets, she called them. She would cut one in half and rub the cut end on the inside of a bowl, put vinagar and cucumber slices in it and let it set in the fridge for a few days, and eat the cucumber slices. That was her only use for garlic. Mom tried the dish and liked them, so she collected a bunch of bulbils and threw them out in a weedy area at home. For decdes she had all the garlic bulbils she wanted. The landload lady also had them in abundance as long as she lived. And she lived a long time. Later I noticed that along country roads, garlic is common. Either there is none or there is a lot. Never just a few scatterred plants. I guess that would be expected from the way they spread, from the scapes falling over. All were hard neck. Oh, I have learned other uses for garlic, I collect the bulbs from the wild. They are small but free. Actually, they are not all that much smaller than store-bought.
|
|
|
Post by paquebot on Sept 7, 2017 22:17:02 GMT -5
Another use for bulbils is soup stock. Just crush them and add them to the rest of the vegetables. No worry about the skins since they are left behind in the sieve.
Martin
|
|
|
Post by walt on Sept 8, 2017 15:23:29 GMT -5
I should have mentioned the woman always used a wooden bowl for this. I guess a metal or ceramic or glass bowl wouldn't have kept any of the garlic juice.
|
|
|
Post by olddutch on Sept 8, 2017 17:44:54 GMT -5
Sorry. Initial post was wrong and is replaced. Bulbils will grow by them selves as has been mentioned above. Just plant them like seeds. For quickest size up space them out, but for rounds plant them pretty tight, depending on the variety. My ferals tend to bulb up very tiny the first year from bulbils, which are pea sized and larger to begin with, even when planted tight. Then it takes a couple of years planting back the biggest cloves from the best bulbs to size it up. Others like Music and opther Porcelains take several years to do so no matter how tightly you plant them from very tiny bulbils.
|
|
|
Post by reed on Sept 12, 2017 5:15:11 GMT -5
I planted all my extra bulbils yesterday only this time I turned over a shovel or two of dirt so they would be on a bare spot and put them all in the old fence lines and at the edge of the neighbors pastures out of range of the road crews. Found quite a few more still on the plants that were planted last year so I scattered them around too. Added four new kinds this year. Also planted small patches of each kind in the garden.
It's 3/4 mile up my road to the blacktop, next year I hope to have semi-wild garlic on both sides the entire length of it. In future I should be able to just harvest what we need and some extra to plant in the garden when ever I want it.
|
|
|
Post by olddutch on Sept 12, 2017 8:10:05 GMT -5
Garlic will certainly go feral. But generally the bulbs will decrease in size dramatically with very tiny cloves. If you don't prune off the scapes, you will definitely have smaller bulbs. If your ditches have brome grass, quack, orchard or other aggressive perennial turf grasses, they will very likely crowd out your garlics or at least thin them to very sparse stands. Garlic does not compete well. Only in very specific, rare situations will it form mass beds. Generally when feral it has a scattered and sparse presence. Garlic does far and away best when reset every year in rich reworked beds that are kept well weeded. Just like tulips, digging, curing and then resetting the bulbs every year in reworked, refertilized beds is the best way to maintain performance. Left alone both tend to run out.
|
|
|
Post by walt on Sept 12, 2017 12:13:49 GMT -5
In native mixed grass prairie in central Kansas, they slowly spread. They will be smaller than common in stores, but big for me to use. For those not familiar with the term "mixed grass prairie", an explanation. In eastern Kansas, most of the native prairie is "tall grass"' big bluestem, eastern gamma grass, switch grass, etc. taller than my head in good soil in a rainy year. Western Kansas is much drier and is shortgrass prairie; buffalo grass, little blue, side oats grama, etc. Those grass species get only ankle high in good soil in a good year. In between, there are not medium grasses, but rather the proportions change from tall, tall with a few short here and there, mixed half and half, short with some tall clumps here and there, and then short. Mixed in are many other plants, of course. For example, within a mile of where I sit are 6 species of sunflower, 4 species of pennstemon, 3 or more species of cactus, at least 2 kinds of alliums, etc.
|
|
|
Post by steev on Sept 13, 2017 1:53:04 GMT -5
Yes; un-dealtwith areas can be a trial; worked-up areas are great for weeds that like disturbed ground; the notion that we can clear an area and plant on it thereafter is a joke; does anyone not get that the plants we rely on for food are generally not suited for fending for themselves, at least in their productive varieties? I'm not pushing for herbicides, only for understanding that the weeds are tougher than our crops, so we must be vigilant.
|
|
|
Post by richardw on Sept 13, 2017 14:24:30 GMT -5
Ive been planting out hardneck garlic in my orchard along with distributing hand fulls of bulbils by throwing far and wide. I'm not worried about bulb size reduction as its a experiment to see if the stress of competing with grasses can help with flower/seed set, also could there be any difference is rust attack compared to the garden garlic.
|
|
|
Post by kazedwards on Sept 15, 2017 0:52:26 GMT -5
Ive been planting out hardneck garlic in my orchard along with distributing hand fulls of bulbils by throwing far and wide. I'm not worried about bulb size reduction as its a experiment to see if the stress of competing with grasses can help with flower/seed set, also could there be any difference is rust attack compared to the garden garlic. Richard I have been reading the holistic orchard and just read about fungal diseases. I wonder if some of the preventative sprays would help with garlic rust. I know that they rust is different in fruit trees but some of the herbal sprays may have the same affect.
|
|
|
Post by steev on Sept 15, 2017 1:11:21 GMT -5
Getting pathogens out of their comfort zone often works; that's why alkaline sprays tend to work on powdery mildew, rust, smut, and moss; doesn't have to be a big deal; baking soda spray is often enough.
|
|
|
Post by philagardener on Sept 15, 2017 5:38:10 GMT -5
Isn't garlic one of the main inputs into herbal sprays folks use to reduce pathogen loads?
|
|
|
Post by richardw on Sept 15, 2017 14:15:17 GMT -5
As Zack will know from our FB page i used baking soda on my garlic last year, but unfortunately i didn't start that till after they first became effected meaning it never rid the garlic of the rust once it was there. This growing season i want to preempt any possible rust attack when the weather looks like we will get a period of the humid, damp and warm stuff. As for planting garlic in the long grass of the orchard, 10+ years ago i found a gooseberry bush growing on the side the road about three minutes drive from here, i grew cutting from it and planted in a row, mulched with horse poo and sawdust, they ended up getting badly hit with mildew but the parent plant didn't, ??, the difference was that the roadside bush was in long grass in a galley where it could get some water, since having moved all my gooseberries to the orchard, no mildew. I'm interested to see if garlic can follow suit, though i do know the rust and mildew are a completely different beast.
|
|
|
Post by flowerbug on Dec 24, 2019 0:25:03 GMT -5
interesting thread for sure and with so many different experiences, i'll put in my two bits... the garlic i've grown here is a hard neck garlic. it doesn't need to be mulched or pampered in this mostly clay soil. i'll put this link in here with some pics in that page and a lot more words so i don't have to retype it all out again. www.anthive.com/project/garlic/one thing i do regret is that way back i took a bunch of handfulls of bulbules from the tops and scattered them in my green manure patch. after several years i realized what a mistake that was and since then gradually started weeding it back out again. a bulb crop in the middle of alfalfa and birdsfoot trefoil and now grasses and other weeds, well, it's a lot of fun to try to get out of there on top of the fact of our base soil being mostly clay... hahahaha... i've had five gallon buckets of nothing but scapes i've cut from there. as an experiment i tried to cook those scapes up (without peeling them) and then tried to food mill the garlic out of there, but it was a horrible tasting result. i'm pretty sure they'd have been more interesting had i just pickled some of them, but i sure wasn't going to do that for that many quarts! right now that back patch is being regularly mowed (well not during the winter) which will keep it from setting any more tops. i was dealing with an injury a few years ago which kept me out of the gardens more than i liked and Mom took that as her sign that she could take over "MY" garden. grr... well it is her place so ... the difference in philosophies between us can be amusing to say the least. i don't mind a bit of chaos or a few weeds. she'll freak out a bit and likes things razed back to bare dirt. i don't mind a bit of surface debris. to her this looks untidy. to me it looks like it should. well, anyways, back to garlic, i've never had any patch of garlic here "disappear" it may cycle with some of the bulbs in a clump going quiet for a season (if i dig up a clump i can find bulbs that did not grow at all). it will be a tight wrapped singleton with a very heavy wrapper around it. in a larger clump there may be several of these. i can then also have some small clumps of bulbs that did grow and there may be a half dozen cloves in each little bulb. here and there i may have a larger bulb in a clump but rarely above an inch or two across unless somehow that bulb is nearer the edge of the clump where it has less competition. when i take those same small cloves and plant them out in a more formal garden and then let them grow out (kept weeded and watered when needed) i can increase the size of the bulbs (and the cloves in the bulbs by quite a bit). after a few years of growing out in this manner and selecting the largest cloves to replant i can get single cloves the size of my thumb or larger. some of the cloves will be so large as they'll want to split. i don't cut the scapes off and on the larger bulbs the individual bulbules will be a nickel to a quarter in size. on the smaller bulbs of course the scapes can be smaller down to the size of a grain of rice or smaller. they all seem to grow if allowed to escape (is that why they're called scapes? ). i've greatly reduced how much garlic i plant each year (from several hundred plants to about 40) but the reaction at the seed swap from the number of people who want a strong garlic that does well in our climate has encouraged me to grow some more of it and also to send a few pounds to a localish farm so they can grow it out and spread it around. i'll have some more scapes and cloves for this coming seed swap too even if February isn't the best time to be dealing with garlic the demand for it was there. i managed to give away about a whole quart of scapes...
in mid-to-late winter if i have extra garlic that we've not used up for cooking i've found a good way to take the sprouting garlic. i peel it and cut the bits of root off and any parts that look to be spoiled and then i put it through my meat grinder. when it is all ground up i drench it with lemon juice and pack it into small jars and put it in the freezer. this will keep for a few years. leave enough head space in the jar for expansion. makes the house smell lovely when grinding. i've also taken this ground up garlic and made a sweet and sour garlic relish out of it. very strong stuff but a delight on saurkraut mustard and a good hot dog or other sausage. no worry about vampires...
|
|