Late April Garlic Snapshot! Let's see them. Come one come all
 

I was in the garden this evening cleaning up and making compost piles and looking at the garlic that is chugging along while most everything else is still a seedling. Then I thought to myself, I wonder what Bower's looks like now. I wonder what North Carolina garlic looks like now. At least, I hope I thought it to myself. Hopefully I didn't pose those questions aloud to the dogs.

So, if you get a chance, go take a pic this weekend; nothing fancy necessary. Just a pic of your garlic fast-approaching mid-Spring. If you can also relate the approx planting and expected harvest time, that would perfect.

There is something about garlic...to me, it seems very representative of that local climate. It can't be rushed with grow lights or transplants; it's very grounded. I know I just saw a recent picture of svalli's and I thought, wow it must be cold there! Which of course, I knew, it's Finland after all, but still! That looks like late February here!

I would start, but of course I forgot to actually take pictures. Hopefully tomorrow in the rain I'll get a chance. I'll take pics of a couple patches plus some still walking around the back of the garden au natural.

Hey JR.. One of the best things about T'ville for me is to see how different things are in other people's climate. So bring on the pics! :D And cheer me up with the sight of things growing, we are snow-on-ground and ice on trees for the past two days...

Here's my pic of the porcelains which are up, taken from the window yesterday (I swear, they haven't grown a bit since then:twisted:) These were spotted coming through the ground April 13, but my second bed which is on the other side of the house obviously isn't getting as much sun - porcelains there did not poke through until the 23rd, and none of the other garlics are up yet.



Just for reference, no crocus has bloomed here yet either. :bummer:

About 10 weeks to go I think.
Sets Sown 5 per 11 litre pot in a glasshouse November 10th 2018 and put outdoors in March.

About 300 total. Variety Thermidrome.

[ATTACH]87017[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]87018[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]87019[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]87020[/ATTACH]

Planted 10/31 through 11/15.
Expected harvest around mid-June.

Daffodils are done blooming. Redbuds are about faded. Crimson Clover is about to be in full bloom. Azaleas are nearing peak color. Dandelions are no longer yellow and are in seed puff ball stage now.

That is Kodiak Brown Mustard in the walkways to prevent weeds and maybe get some wireworm prevention. I will have to mow it and incorporate it into the soil to make that happen though.

[ATTACH]87024[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]87025[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]87026[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]87027[/ATTACH]

[ATTACH]87028[/ATTACH]

My garlic in pots was grouped for the winter but spread out now as the space is needed for other things. They will get one more move before they are done approximately mid June. One variety, Metechi grew stretched and skimpy in January. Not suitable for a mild winter such as the first part of ours was. I grow about 50 heads in potsdue to lack of ground space and most varieties do well.

As of April 20th
[img]https://i.imgur.com/4Wy2DLK.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/xOKBDiy.jpg[/img]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/OPBr882.jpg[/img]

1,2,3 is the 6" raised bed I built a year and a half ago to corral the garlic that has been growing here since the late 1950's. They have 7 leaves, about 15" tall. Planted mid-Nov. I finally covered with 3-4" of wood chips in early January right before it got pretty cold. Most of wood chips were scraped back in early March. By then, only a few had penetrated the thinner areas and I got worried 4" of soggy chips was too much. This garlic will probably be ready mid-late June.

4 is the walking garlic, 10 feet away. That is the SW side of arbor vitae. This garlic is unthinned and bulbs would be small but otherwise it looks the same as the stuff I corralled. That is how it has grown for years, here, and I wanted to keep that patch just in case. It does not get mulched or anything.

5,6 is around the NW side of the house, so it gets only a little afternoon sun. I transplanted that from the walking stuff...I think 3 years back, now. It came up small that first season, and I didn't bother to dig any up. But again, now it pretty much looks like the rest of them. The bulbs would be small and clustered but the growth appears the same.

7,8 and 9,10 are little 3 ft plots I put over at the comm garden. *[I] They did not go in until December, I believe.[/I]* These bulbs were second string. I was going to put in some more all along my border, and had forked it, but the weather turned or something and it never happened. These beds were forked and treated otherwise same as my main bed in the first pics, just planted a month later. They look about the same except most have 6 leaves instead of 7, and about 12" instead of 15". But this patch is also more exposed to wind, sun, and runoff and does not have the 6" raised box.
EDIT: these were in fact planted in mid-Nov same as the main bed in pics 1 2 3. Only the late border planting was aborted due to weather. The size difference is due to location/smaller cloves.

Great to see all the photos of garlic growth at the prime. In couple of months I and Bower will also have garlic at same stage.

Last week has been record warm here and all snow finally disappeared from our back yard. The garlic really spurted to growth in a week. Temperatures are now getting back to normal with some freezing nights in the forecast.

My husband went out to the country today and sent me a photo of the garlic beds. I stayed home to work with the raised beds here in the city. I have some garlic growing in couple of them and I do also have garlic in Rootrainers for planting to field as soon as I can work the ground.
The tallest ones in the Rootrainers were planted already at fall and buried in the raised bed for the winter, the other ones were planted in mid March.

Sari

Everybody's stuff is looking so good. I hate to spoil the parade of nice stuff but it was "come one, come all" so here's the pitiful garlic in my garden.

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/CI0XQd3.jpg[/IMG]

I checked again yesterday and nothing is dividing yet even though the plants look like they're past ready. The rounds aren't even decent size yet. I'm just going to let them keep doing what they're doing and see what happens.

At least the garlic's good for something. It kept the deer away from the broccoli...and the one cabbage whose seed somehow got into the broccoli packet! :shock:

Here's my garlic, planted in late October, this is the first year in a long time that I've grown it. What do you think, does it look fairly decent? Why the yellow, any idea?

I think they look good to me. But how will they taste? Great, I hope.

We were here looking at some of these great pics everyone posted, and I was informed that my garlic pics (5,6) along the house in my post above was indeed planted 3 years ago - but that it was BULBILs, not summertime transplants. I was surprised, and immediately disagreed, but now I'm sure that is correct. There is a story there, but it must suffice that it does explain why they are still spaced fairly nicely after 3 years, and why I didn't see much that the year after we planted.

The following three pics I took on Friday when I was over at the comm garden, but didn't post them. It is garlic from Agway, imported Chinese bulbs last I checked there, planted into freshly tilled ground last May. I don't believe that plot has been visited since July or August. I know it is garlic because I was at the garden when they planted it. I offered them some of mine in the form of big shovel clump 60ft transplants, so they could have garlic last year, but they declined.

xellos99, GrowingCoastal, svalli and all you growing in containers; what are the dimensions of your containers, do they stay in them the whole time, and what are you using for potting mix?


svalli is there a limit to how long they can stay in the rootrainers?


I have tried Earthboxes a few times and it's always a fail. I think they stay too wet, even though I didn't water and I tried to keep them out of the rain. They go in around Thanksgiving, and I try to keep them green through May. It's usually 90 plus by then.I eventually transplanted them into gallon pots, but they look pretty sad.

I was surprised by the container growers, pretty neat. And I had never heard or rootrainers at all.

I have garlic in my greenhouse too - bulbils and rounds in containers. I adjusted the spacing based on size of the bulbil or round and they all have at least a foot of depth, but I have never tried to grow full sized garlic in a pot.
As you can see, these are starting to get a bit floppy - that's because it gets really warm when the sun shines, but there's no wind to make them sturdy. And they are too far along to put them outdoors IMO where it is still freezing at night.
I may have overwatered a bit, and then I saw moss or algae starting to grow on the surface, which tells me the pH is too acid - so I sprinkled quite a bit of lime and scratched it in. Some of the side leaves turned yellow when I did that. So now I'm not sure what I should do to keep them happy. I am not worried about it though. The same flopping over happened last year with the greenhouse bulbils I planted, and they stayed floppy when I put them out. I harvested them about the same time as outside rounds and the results were just fine.
I do think there are so many causes for yellow leaves, you really can't know unless there's an obvious cause - too wet, too cold, too dry....

Shrinkrap in the case of those that you pulled, the 'pink root' is a disease associated with overwatering. So you may be right, they got too wet in the earthbox.

Mid-June seemed early when I reread my post above; last year mine was picked July 4th. I don't know how on earth I forgot that because the next day it started raining and it seemed like it didn't stop for months. I need to start looking at notes before I post rather than going off memory. I just pressed some into thinly sliced venison for steak sandwiches, and it smells wonderful in here. I still have plenty in good shape to cook with so I guess that was the right time to harvest.

JR those are some unbelievable size and color leaves. Very nice.
They look like leeks!
Are they so big because you planted jumbo cloves from jumbo bulbs?

Here garlic needs a raised bed for good drainage. I have found pots, since I lack ground area, to be a good solution. My 3.5 gal pots grow 4 or 5 heads nicely. I use promix hp, new and used, plus mushroom compost, 1/3 each. In the ground I too was getting pink root/bulb from being too wet. The pots dry out and I can easily tell by the weight if they need water by lifting one edge to test.
Elephant garlic does well this way too with 1 per 1 gal pot.
Hummingbirds like the flowers of it and I like the EG to be portable for mixing in with flowers.
Last year I tried large purple Russian garlic in a 1 gal pot and it did well too.
My garlic in pots heads up nicely and compares well with any grown around here.

[img]https://i.imgur.com/GhCGVB4.jpg[/img]

Last year's May 4
[img]https://i.imgur.com/nBKP3jH.jpg[/img]

Guard dog on duty
[img]https://i.imgur.com/qvHFJ3H.jpg[/img]

They look awesome, Coastal. :)
And Pure Harvest is right, JR - you've got some beautiful foliage there. Whatever you're doing, the garlic is loving it. :D

Nice cloves! Thanks all, for the feedback about pink root. I've posted pictures elsewhere of evidence of several other causes of yellow leaves and flopping; I'll add them later if it would help me or anyone else.

Beautiful garlic!

Here is a pic of some of mine.

Thanks! They do look good right now, and are a nice contrast to the bare beds with tiny sprouts just coming up. This pretty much grows itself, since it is so well acclimated. All I've done is harvest, dry/cure and re-plant it at roughly the right time into broadforked beds with lots of good compost and a little 10-10-10. It still looks the same as the walking stuff, just bigger bulbs and much easier to dig up.

I used the biggest bulbs for planting the raised box, but still had nice ones for over at the comm garden. This garlic has a lot of cloves per bulb, maybe 12? From the outside it might look like big cloves but upon bulb breakage the big ones may be doubles or even triples. So I end up planting perhaps 2-5 of the cloves from each broken bulb, maybe planting a big tight double clove as twins, and putting the rest of the smaller cloves into a brown bag for first cooking use.

It was not so long ago when we would dig some up in May just to get them out of the way for tomatoes, move the clumps somewhere else in the garden, and not dig any up to eat until they were well past prime. Any and all improvement is due to the posts here on tomatoville.

Very nice, velikipop. What is the fencing for? Trample protection from the dogs?



GrowingCoastal, I can just about smell that garlic in your second pic. It may be the imagery of the huge bulbs just before that while scrolling down, or the fact it is big as corn.

Yes, that is exactly what it is for. We have a year old pup that has yet to learn that the beds are off limits. She has done a lot of unwanted pruning of plants and trampling.

Coastal, wow that is really great looking garlic. I would never have thought that growing it in a pot would produce such nice large bulbs. I bet the watchdog also helped by keeping all the garlic pests away!

Alex

[QUOTE=velikipop;734169]Yes, that is exactly what it is for. We have a year old pup that has yet to learn that the beds are off limits. She has done a lot of unwanted pruning of plants and trampling.[/QUOTE]

Obviously your pup is just a little too young yet. Mine even mows the lawn a little. :yes::lol:

It so often rains a lot here in June, just before garlic harvesting time so, not so good. In the pots if it seems wet and going to rain I can turn pots on their sides and no more rain can fall on the soil in them.

I dug a few more this morning to see how they're coming along. Still small...

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/RgnO0J7.jpg[/IMG]

...but they're starting to divide. Hard to see in the pic but I can feel individual cloves starting. Progress even though the plants are ugly as sin. :surprised:

[IMG]https://i.imgur.com/mej0orX.jpg[/IMG]

Here I have seven different varieties just starting to poke their tops up, plus two Monaro Purple cloves that broke off when the plants were harvested last season have put their tops up
In order, Italian White, planted Monaro Purple, missed Monaro Purple

Very helpful!

Whwoz, that is so cool, that your garlic is coming up in sync with ours way north. :lol: I guess they don't mind being a winter crop, either. 8-) (Your winter is probably as warm as our summer :?)

[QUOTE=bower;734256]Whwoz, that is so cool, that your garlic is coming up in sync with ours way north. :lol: I guess they don't mind being a winter crop, either. 8-) (Your winter is probably as warm as our summer :?)[/QUOTE]

Indeed it is Bower, out winter days typically max out between 12 and 15C and the garlic grows very happily at those temps