Tomatoville® Gardening Forums - View Single Post - Dug the Inferno and learned about bulbils

JRinPA · June 9, 2020

I don't know the group. Some have said rocambole from pics. I originally thought purple stripe, because of the, well, purple stripes, but it really doesn't matter to me. Always try to buy local seed. This garlic is very local. House was built in '59, my parents bought it from the original owners, a Greek immigrant family (or so I always thought, since our name is Greek and only differs by two letters - that fact supposedly drove the postmaster nuts with mail forwarding). They had all kinds of mediterranean stuff growing. A stipulation of the sale was that their family could dig out and take their plants/trees with them. The pear tree and plum tree stayed, along with some of their garlic. It has been walking here ever since, adapting to this climate. A few years back I started growing it proper-like, but there are still walkers and some backup spots that don't get harvested.

Most of what I know about garlic, I learned here on tville from reading TomNJ, Durgan, and others, and from this site: http://www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com/...he-garlic.html
(there are some broken links there that you have to patch up manually, but just look at the format of the link and you can figure it out.)

I just do a raised bed with compost, mostly yard waste compost, some kitchen, about 4-5" high. Around the first week of November I try to get the garlic in. I don't want it to sprout before winter sets in. I take seed from the healthiest, biggest bulbs, and then take the biggest, undamaged cloves from the bulb. Might only be 2 or 3 cloves that make the cut, per bulb. The remaining cloves get used next in the kitchen. When I get the number I want for a bed, I soak the cloves for a few hours in water with baking soda before planting. The skin will slip off. Floaters, or any damaged or discolored clove is discarded. Next, the cloves go into isopropyl alcohol for a few minutes, then rinse and into the ground, about 4" deep. Basically back down to touching ground level with the bottom. Cover with 2" of wood chips. That puts a full 6" of insulation over them, but they can't get flooded out since they are still above grade. Wait until they come up in mid-end February. Pretty, green through the snow. Well, not this year. No snow. Weed once or twice in May/June. Wait until they start to scape, last week. Break off scapes, spread them around. Thank you, I'd love some! These smell wonderful! Harvest before a big heavy rain, sometime at the end of June or early July. Growing doesn't get much easier. I just loosen/pull them, dry brush off, and hang them for a couple weeks in the basement for curing. At some point I trim them a bit shorter, but so far, I've just let them hang all winter in the basement, taking a half dozen bulbs upstairs at a time. I must have grown well over 200 last year. We use a lot - a whole lot more than when we were buying garlic at the store. It taste so much better. I didn't box up the "leftovers" - 99 bulbs trimmed short- until I turned on my grow light in April. By then, some are already starting to sprout, but we'll still be using them into canning season, before using this year's, so I put them inside a box so they don't see any light. I should probably do that sooner to try to head off the sprouting, but they'll still sprout to some extent.

This season I took it a step further and gave the 5x9 3rd year garlic bed in the backyard a nice piece of heavy black plastic mulch weed barrier. I burned beautifully precise holes and planted 4" deep, and then put the wood chips on top. Yippee. But my other garlic beds did not get the plastic treatment, and look fine too. Just not as perfectly spaced and some light weeds.

Garlic might be smallish this year since it is so dry; time will tell. I have 105 in the backyard box, probably another 100 at the comm garden in two beds, and another 50 or so spring planted as edging/companion planting for a couple beds. In May they popped up in about 3 days from 3", I admit I get a kick out of that. This is the latest I have planted any. A March planting is a little later harvest than November, and smaller, but still well formed and good tasting. I'm wondering what these May planted cloves will do.

June 9, 2020	#26
JRinPA Tomatovillian™ Join Date: Jul 2013 Location: SE PA Posts: 964	I don't know the group. Some have said rocambole from pics. I originally thought purple stripe, because of the, well, purple stripes, but it really doesn't matter to me. Always try to buy local seed. This garlic is very local. House was built in '59, my parents bought it from the original owners, a Greek immigrant family (or so I always thought, since our name is Greek and only differs by two letters - that fact supposedly drove the postmaster nuts with mail forwarding). They had all kinds of mediterranean stuff growing. A stipulation of the sale was that their family could dig out and take their plants/trees with them. The pear tree and plum tree stayed, along with some of their garlic. It has been walking here ever since, adapting to this climate. A few years back I started growing it proper-like, but there are still walkers and some backup spots that don't get harvested. Most of what I know about garlic, I learned here on tville from reading TomNJ, Durgan, and others, and from this site: http://www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com/...he-garlic.html (there are some broken links there that you have to patch up manually, but just look at the format of the link and you can figure it out.) I just do a raised bed with compost, mostly yard waste compost, some kitchen, about 4-5" high. Around the first week of November I try to get the garlic in. I don't want it to sprout before winter sets in. I take seed from the healthiest, biggest bulbs, and then take the biggest, undamaged cloves from the bulb. Might only be 2 or 3 cloves that make the cut, per bulb. The remaining cloves get used next in the kitchen. When I get the number I want for a bed, I soak the cloves for a few hours in water with baking soda before planting. The skin will slip off. Floaters, or any damaged or discolored clove is discarded. Next, the cloves go into isopropyl alcohol for a few minutes, then rinse and into the ground, about 4" deep. Basically back down to touching ground level with the bottom. Cover with 2" of wood chips. That puts a full 6" of insulation over them, but they can't get flooded out since they are still above grade. Wait until they come up in mid-end February. Pretty, green through the snow. Well, not this year. No snow. Weed once or twice in May/June. Wait until they start to scape, last week. Break off scapes, spread them around. Thank you, I'd love some! These smell wonderful! Harvest before a big heavy rain, sometime at the end of June or early July. Growing doesn't get much easier. I just loosen/pull them, dry brush off, and hang them for a couple weeks in the basement for curing. At some point I trim them a bit shorter, but so far, I've just let them hang all winter in the basement, taking a half dozen bulbs upstairs at a time. I must have grown well over 200 last year. We use a lot - a whole lot more than when we were buying garlic at the store. It taste so much better. I didn't box up the "leftovers" - 99 bulbs trimmed short- until I turned on my grow light in April. By then, some are already starting to sprout, but we'll still be using them into canning season, before using this year's, so I put them inside a box so they don't see any light. I should probably do that sooner to try to head off the sprouting, but they'll still sprout to some extent. This season I took it a step further and gave the 5x9 3rd year garlic bed in the backyard a nice piece of heavy black plastic mulch weed barrier. I burned beautifully precise holes and planted 4" deep, and then put the wood chips on top. Yippee. But my other garlic beds did not get the plastic treatment, and look fine too. Just not as perfectly spaced and some light weeds. Garlic might be smallish this year since it is so dry; time will tell. I have 105 in the backyard box, probably another 100 at the comm garden in two beds, and another 50 or so spring planted as edging/companion planting for a couple beds. In May they popped up in about 3 days from 3", I admit I get a kick out of that. This is the latest I have planted any. A March planting is a little later harvest than November, and smaller, but still well formed and good tasting. I'm wondering what these May planted cloves will do.