Those look fine to me. You could leave them a little longer to get bigger, but it won't be that much of a difference.

JRinPA, I would have done the same -- pulled them now. They look great!

Like Bower, I too err on the early side after a couple of heartbreaking years when I left them a bit too long and lost a lot to rot. I'm growing in rich soil that holds moisture well and my rule is when the sixth leaf on most starts turning, it's time.

Here's my 2018 harvest just pulled - 108 cloves planted in late October, 108 scapes tucked in the fridge soon to be pesto, 3 heads that went a touch too long and will be used right away, and 105 to be cleaned and cured.

L-R Zemo, Turkish Red, German White, Music, Continental.

[IMG]https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180705/35e5979f93c3fd3381cc711b66ad6d2e.jpg[/IMG]

How did we both get 108!!! How random. Actually I got 109, one was a double, I forgot about that. But still, haha. I think if I grew more than one kind it would be too much thinking to cook with!

We hung them last night. I had six broken wrappers, not just the two I noticed while pulling quickly under threat of thunder. I'm really glad I got them in...it rained hard yesterday evening/night, then absolutely poured again tonight around 6pm, and is supposed to be heavy tomorrow in spurts - 1"-3" localized.

I do have another small section garlic planted in spring, just because I had a huge bag of tiny bulbs to eat, and some were starting to sprout, so I threw them in about a 4 sq foot patch. The scapes were later on them, and smaller, but I'll probably pick them sometime next week or two.

It's going to be a different world now when it comes to size. This crop was grown from the largest/best cloves from the walking stuff last year. The biggest bulbs were probably a few at 1.5", and most of the seed stock was from smaller. This year a good bit are 2"+. Next year I can only think the harvest will be another jump in size.

I took these pics of the last 1020 tray last night, with the 6 broken wrappers, the rounds to small cloves, and the bulbils to rounds. The last pic is the bag from last year I'm still digging through while cooking. By now it's the smallest stuff from last year. When a recipe calls for a clove, I use a bulb. Pain in the butt to peel, but it taste great. I hope this big stuff taste the same. I have yet to have a chance to look at that website to try to ID. Thist is pretty much what they look like, and from the searching I did last summer, I started calling it purple stripe.

[QUOTE=JRinPA;707065]bumbles per umbel....now we're talking. lol. [/QUOTE]

Aargh, the combination of bumble fingers and autocorrect makes typing on a phone totally frustrating.
I’ve always used bulbils to grow out my garlic, figure it’s more economical to replant the rounds and resulting small cloves every year than having to keep back a percentage of what I’ve grown.
I’m convinced that it gives the garlic a chance to acclimate to my growing conditions and growing out from bulbils seems to reinvigorate the plants – there have been studies undertaken on this so it’s not just anecdotal.
Your harvest looks great! Only just finished planting down in the southern hemisphere – last count was just over 400. Enough to share with family and keep us in fresh, dehydrated, fermented and pickled garlic

[QUOTE=JRinPA;707195]How did we both get 108!!! How random. Actually I got 109, one was a double, I forgot about that. But still, haha.[/QUOTE]


Actually, I had one double as well... I grow in rows of six across in my 4' beds, and 108 is very neatly divisible by six! Just as I was finishing up today, I got the flash flood warning alert on my phone for Friday.

They are all now trimmed and hanging in the basement. A couple of years ago I discovered that if I allowed them to dry just enough to brush the dirt off, trimmed the roots to about an inch, and cut all the green leaves down to about 5-6 inches, they would dry and cure without me having to touch them again until they were ready for use or replanting.

I grew out some bulbils for the first time this year, but they didn't get very large. I am going to replant them in the fall and see if I get any significant size gain in year two.

Beautiful garlic, both of you!
FD, the Continental looks huge, is it a porcelain too?
JR, gorgeous red clove wrappers! :love: I am no expert but what you're showing agrees with what I've seen of Purple Stripe. They are beautiful! 8-)

Thanks Bower! Yes, the Continental is a porcelain. The description from the on-line vendor is: "A gorgeous bulbous porcelain beauty that has the the largest cloves of any variety we grow. Rich, oily, and quite spicy, this garlic will impress you and your friends, in the field and in the kitchen."

I also found mention of it on another site that said it's not really a variety, but just a catch-all name for a group of porcelains. Whatever it is, this is my second year growing it and I'm quite pleased with it.

Zemo and Turkish Red are new varieties for me. I bought them from farmers at the Quabbin Garlic and Arts Festival last fall. They both did well.

And while most of mine are porcelains, I found they all do have their own taste profiles and heat levels. Does it really matter when you're cooking with them? No. But I've had years where one variety or another has failed while others thrived, so I don't like putting all my eggs in one basket.

[QUOTE=meganp;707198]Aargh, the combination of bumble fingers and autocorrect makes typing on a phone totally frustrating.
I’ve always used bulbils to grow out my garlic, figure it’s more economical to replant the rounds and resulting small cloves every year than having to keep back a percentage of what I’ve grown.
I’m convinced that it gives the garlic a chance to acclimate to my growing conditions and growing out from bulbils seems to reinvigorate the plants – there have been studies undertaken on this so it’s not just anecdotal.
Your harvest looks great! Only just finished planting down in the southern hemisphere – last count was just over 400. Enough to share with family and keep us in fresh, dehydrated, fermented and pickled garlic[/QUOTE]

How many years does it take for you to get a nice bulb, growing from bulbils? I have tried on several occasions and never succeed.

FD, if you're growing up rounds from a porcelain, I think you'll find it well worth it.
When I first started growing from bulbils, I thought that varieties with bigger bulbils would get to full size quicker, but that is not the case except maybe for Rocamboles which are really large bulbils but had the poorest survivorship for me here in the bulbil stage.
Porcelains have the smallest bulbils and my rounds were only the size of marbles or smaller for the most part. However there is a big jump in size from the round to the clove of next generation bulb, because of only having 4 cloves per bulb. Many of the bulbs from those first cloves would be considered full size, although they did produce even bigger bulbs the next year.
By comparison, it is taking a really long time to grow out full size Persian Star and Chesnok Red, which had larger bulbils in the first place but much smaller cloves in the first bulbs because there are 8 or 9+ per bulb.
Here is a pic to show how the porcelains grow up. The row on the far left is full size cloves left over from my main beds, so you can see an exact comparison in the same conditions (these beds were planted at a tighter spacing and were snow covered longer so came up later than the main crop). The next rows to the right are Music from the first divided bulbs. The stalks are not quite as thick but they are getting close already. They will certainly be big enough to eat... I'll post a pic when these are dug and show the size.

Bower, yes, my bulbils were all porcelains (Music, German White, and Continental). Glad to hear the first year results were typical!

My husband was browsing through the pictures on my phone tonight and found the one of all my garlic. His comment was, "Holy &#$% you have a lot of garlic!" He doesn't realize that I've been growing pretty much the same amount since 2011 when I first started down this gardening adventure. And he jumped the gun three weeks ago and bought the first grocery store head of garlic in several years because we were all out. It's one of those strange tasting, pink striped Chinese "hardneck" things that pop up around this time of year. It's still sitting in the produce basket with just a couple of cloves missing. I know I'm passing it over for my own home grown stuff...

JRinPA, or anyone, LOL, when you are down to the little ones from lat year and have newer garlic that is bigger, I trim the old heads tightly on the root end and cut in half , right through the bulbs, then toss them into the stock pot for flavor. I get tired of peeling those really small ones, <smile>, and this gets a use out of them with out me going crazier than I have to.

I think I did pretty good! :D

REALLY impressed with Romanian Red! Love my Georgian Fire too!

Greg

Those are a fine size, Greg... it was definitely ready to harvest! :)

I got a great crop last year, but it looks like I will be buying mine this year. Leaves are dying off and I pulled a couple and the bulbs are under developed, only about an inch across. Yours look great.

Fabulous garlic!