Garlic 2018
 

Sunny and 65 degrees today, so I decided to rake off the straw mulch and let the sun warm the garlic patch. It looks like 99% of the garlic made it thru -30 degree wind chills this winter and has sprouted.

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Oh wow PMC! So happy to see it! Spring has arrived!!!! Congrats!!! :D

Not quite spring yet, but this was a good sign. I was kinda worried as it was a lot colder than normal here this winter. Hope it killed a lot of bugs.

That is a beautiful sight! :D

I think that it will be two months until I will see anything like that. We have over foot of snow and temperatures this week have bee coldest of this winter (-26°C yesterday). Long term forecast for Northern Europe in March has cooler than normal temperatures, winter continues here...:?!?:

Sari

Looking good!

same outlook for here as sari in finland.
i still have over two ft of snow on my garden.
i missed planting my garlic in the fall when our weather turned winter in late october last year. i will be spring planting by necessity as soon as possible.

nice to see the garlic coming up, a welcome sign of better weather ahead.


keith

Well... there may be close to a foot of snow on my garlic beds for the past two days, but that is the deepest snow cover they've had all winter. This morning's snow has turned to freezing drizzle and the high will be above freezing today, and every day in the forecast this week is above zero although near the freezing mark. If there's any sunshine at all, there won't be snow on the raised beds for long. But still we are a long way from the usual 'frost free' date of June 4, and normally see lots of winter weather still in March and April.

I am certainly curious to see how the garlic fares with such a snowless winter, and so many thaws.

[QUOTE=PureHarvest;686244]Looking good![/QUOTE]

Thank You!
I learned this technique from a pro! :))

Love your "gardeining" space-- picture made my heart go pitter -patter! Glad your garlic made it!!!

It's on a 360 acre parcel my cousins own, my garden space is around an acre and a half. Most of the property is timber and bottom ground. There's about 15 acres planted in corn every year, that gets less productive every year. I'd like to figure out something profitable to grow there instead of corn, beans and wheat which is all the farmers grow here.

Im sure you will find an alternative crop. Having a market is the first challenge. Not that I know much, but goats and goat milk products seem to spring up everywhere. It could be that there is a wealth of money in this area so there are ready buyers for exotic products.

YOu will figure it out.

[QUOTE=Black Krim;686511]Im sure you will find an alternative crop. Having a market is the first challenge. Not that I know much, but goats and goat milk products seem to spring up everywhere. It could be that there is a wealth of money in this area so there are ready buyers for exotic products.

YOu will figure it out.[/QUOTE]



Garlic is an option...
Horseradish...
Raspberries, black berries ...[IMG]https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/20180316/39dd022e08dec9215afdd18117a4fc8b.jpg[/IMG]

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Planted 27 thornless blackberries, and 34 red raspberries, black raspberries should in soon. Doesn't look like much, hopefully by next year it will look awsum.


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Looking good!

I ordered 50 eversweet strawberries and 6 prime ark freedom....just for family use. To learn how to care for these, then add more.

I watch alot of utube videos posted by universities to find good varieties .

Best place I found to buy plants is Nourse Farms. The red raspberry “Killarney” I planted, came from there.
The best are free plants which the thornless blackberries were. A guy gave me a bag of huge frozen blackberries last year that were really good. I asked if had any plants to thin out... he said yeah... I easily could have dug 200 plants out of one bed. But settled on about 30.

Years are not alike and gardening this far north shows the variability really well. Last year this time I had first garlic sprouts poking through the frozen soil. This year we have almost two feet of snow and it does not show any signs of melting. Upper photos are from the raised beds and field last year in March and lower are what it looks like at my garlic beds now.

Sari

We are running late here also, but not so severe...
It's been pouring down rain at about 40* F

There's more snow on my garlic beds now than there has been all winter. :lol: No hurry, I just hope they survived the times without the snow. :o

Mine grows wild, so it looks A-ok.

[QUOTE=bower;690349]There's more snow on my garlic beds now than there has been all winter. :lol: No hurry, I just hope they survived the times without the snow. :o[/QUOTE]



Same here. We went through multi days of sub-zero (F) temps with no snow on the beds for insulation. Last year was one of my best garlic years. I'm afraid of what this year will bring...

[QUOTE=Father'sDaughter;690374]Same here. We went through multi days of sub-zero (F) temps with no snow on the beds for insulation. Last year was one of my best garlic years. I'm afraid of what this year will bring...[/QUOTE]



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Looking good so far!



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Enough snow melted that I could finally get to the garden yesterday. The beds run east-west and the north half is still snow covered, but the south half are bare and I have lots of garlic sprouting. I was so happy to see that! The rest of the snow should be gone within the next few days.

Many of you in more milder climates may already have your garlic harvested and curing, so how does your harvest look like?

Even the ground had snow cover quite long we had a jump start to summer in end of May with some record temperatures and the garlic got growing fast. It has been really hot and dry and luckily I moved my planting to more moist location than last year. I have started to harvest the garlic two weeks earlier than normally and have now lifted half of what is growing on the field. The Siberian Marbled Purple Stripe, which I planted most has grown really well and produced much bigger heads than earlier. It has usually had only four cloves, but now there are only couple of such and most have five or six cloves.

The first photo has the ones lifted yesterday and cleaned today. Second photo shows the colors of the ones I lifted last week and have been hanging in the garage for five days.

Sari

[QUOTE=svalli;709539]

The first photo has the ones lifted yesterday and cleaned today. Second photo shows the colors of the ones I lifted last week and have been hanging in the garage for five days.

Sari[/QUOTE]

Such beautiful bulbs!!

+1!!! The color of the bulbs after hanging is simply gorgeous. :love:

I just removed scapes from the porcelains today, and the purple stripes are a week later, so no harvest reports here for another three + weeks. :wait:

I lifted the remaining fall planted garlic from the field on Friday and brought those home for cleaning. I was happily surprised how Red Russian, which originates from Kolkja in Estonia, had grown. I have never got so large hardneck heads. The biggest one is 3" or 76 mm in diameter

Sari

Beautiful! Looks like they have about 8 cloves per bulb too, so you don't need too many bulbs to replant the same amount. :yes:

Now I have all fall planted garlic cleaned for dying in the garage. After a dry period, we got humid weather and thunderstorms, so I can not dry them outdoors. I got the last ones cleaned yesterday just before the constant thunder and heavy rains started.

Sari

Perfect timing! And they look wonderful all cleaned up for drying. :D8-)

Dry/wet season impact on harvest time
 

I don't have a picture of what I've harvested, but I have a picture of what I've not. Usually we harvest first week of August, but this year was extremely dry until about eight days ago, when we started a few days of very heavy rains. During the dry spell, we hardly ever watered the garlic, and as a result the leaves got quite dry and they look much different from last year. So it was difficult for me to tell by the leaves when to harvest. But anyway, I harvested about 20 or so of the 150 bulbs, and they look good. It's been about three weeks since scape harvest. Should I harvest the rest? How much difference does a dry or wet season make in when to harvest?

Thanks!

It looks like there is not much green leaves on your garlic, so the bulbs will not grow anymore and should be harvested before all wrappers have deteriorated. If I were you, I would dig them up now.

Sari