Artificial vernalization and spring planting garlic worked so well that last fall I planted about 500 cloves and saved about 300 cloves for spring. Then when it was already too late to do any fall planting here, I got seed garlic as gift, purchased some from clearance and even ordered new ones still last month. Now I have much more to be planted spring time than what I did last fall.
Our old refrigerator, which I used for vernalization quit working last fall, so I kept the seed garlic in garage which has thermostat set to 50°F. I started planting them to rootrainers and pots after Christmas, but they were sprouting too early due to the temperature in the garage. I then moved all to the greenhouse in a shelf which has plastic hood and covered it with multiple layers of the light weight row cover. The temperature has been fluctuating between above freezing and some extremely cold days, so I put a 200W heater with thermostat in there, which keeps the temperature just above freezing. So far it looks good, I have already potted 540 cloves and those are growing roots, but there is not much new green growth, which simulates fall planting quite well. I have still eight bags of seed garlic waiting to be potted, those can easily have 400 additional cloves in them, so with these and the potted elephant garlic I could have 1000 garlic plants to plant into the field this spring. I think that the situation has now got out of hand totally.
Sari