Planting Garlic in December

      I have heard a saying about planting garlic on the shortest day of the year.  Well I am pretty close to being that late so I am hoping for the best.  I would certainly expect a great crop of green garlic.

      At the bottom of the northern most tomato trellis I planted almost two dozen Russian Red garlic cloves from my last year's harvest.  These were some of the largest cloves that I saved especially for next year's crop.

      In the new tomato trellis near the middle of the garden, I planted one dozen Music cloves from last year's harvest.  These were premium cloves that will hopefully provide next year's seed stock.

      This bed at the park was heavily planted by casting cloves on the slightly disturbed soil.  The dried grass clippings were then lightly spread over the seeds.  It felt good to be out in the garden today.  And the forecast for next week is wintry cold, so I am happy to be done with the garlic.

Garlic, and Next Year More Garlic

Two heads of Garlic,  November 16th, 2012

      Last year a neighbor gave me two heads of named garlic, a first for me.  The head on the left was Red Russian, and the head on the right was Music.

      The Red Russian divided into eleven cloves, nearly 50% more than the seven cloves I got from the Music bulb.  The cloves were planted on November 16th of last year.  The bulbs were harvested in July of this year, with one bulb of Music lost to the wet early summer.  Many of the Red Russian bulbs felt a little spongy, also because of the wet soil.  The bulbs were dried for a couple of weeks on a rack in the porch, then bagged and forgotten in the garage.

      Hoping it is not too late to plant garlic, I rescued the bulbs from their stay in the garage.  The Music bulbs felt pretty firm, and split up nicely into 37 cloves that would be planted.

      These are the biggest, plumpest cloves of garlic I have ever seen!  Look at that one monster to the left of my thumb.  And from the taste test back in July, quite tasty too.

      The Music cloves were planted at the east end of bed number two in the back yard garden.  The more numerous but smaller cloves of Red Russian were planted in a group near the middle of bed number two.  Two of the Red Russian bulbs had dried to essentially dust, and many of the small cloves were just discarded.  Music certainly won the first year competition, though Red Russian may just have disliked the wet spring and early summer.  Next year could be completely different.

      The cloves were pushed down into the soil in three shallow trenches, then lightly covered.  From just one head each last year, I should have a monster haul next year.  And then..... the numbers get mind boggling.

Early Garlic Harvest

Garlic picked June 6th,  2013

      Last years garlic harvest was somewhat disappointing because it did not store well.  The wrappers were very thin, and some were torn as I dug the bulbs.  Early indications this year were positive, with a big crop growing quickly.  But a few weeks ago, some of the leaves were starting to turn brown, and now many of the plants have fallen over.  The bulbs above will be okay, but they are on the small side.  Harvest date around here should be around June 22nd or later, so I am concerned that the garlic doesn't know that.

Many stems fallen over

Garlic from bulbils

      The garlic shown above from bulbils planted in the fall of 2012 are even further along.  If I don't dig them all now, the stems will soon disappear and leave me no way to find the bulbs.  I knew that I would have to replant the first year bulbils this fall for another season next year, but I expected a longer season for them this year.  Anybody else experiencing a forced early harvest of the garlic crop?

      This bed of garlic was started from some of my larger cloves in 2012, and seems to be doing a little better with continuing growth.  My garlic over at the park looks better, that is the plants are more robust and not falling over.  Yet when I dig down in the soil to take a peek at the bulb size, I am disappointed that they are not larger.  I guess it makes sense that this often cool and damp spring has kept down bulb size, but why should they be stopping their growth?

      Update June 11th, 2013:

Part of forced early harvest, drying on a screen

May First, 2013 - Back Yard Shots

      Where does time go?  It is May first already, and I am terribly behind in my gardening.  It was just such a cold and gray winter that I had difficulty waking up from hibernation.  It will be a summer where I have to buy all of my vegetable starts, because I don't even have peppers or tomatoes!

A couple of driftwood pieces by the Ash tree

Bleeding Heart

Pause between spring and summer bloomers

Rescued kale from park compost pile

Enjoying salad greens,  May 1, 2013

Anticipate a great garlic harvest the first of July

Everbearing raspberry bed starting up

Leaf pile still to be shredded, even more work

Garlic, March Update

      It has been a disappointing winter.  Generally cold, damp and gray.  And hardly a single snow flake.  But very few days when it is enjoyable to be outside puttering in the garden.  So it is a welcome sight that the garlic seems not to care about the gloomy weather, and is making nice progress for a harvest in three to four months time.

Garlic on 3/18/2013, planted 12/14/2012

Music Garlic 3/19/2013, cloves planted 11/16/2012

Red Russian Garlic 3/19/2013, cloves planted 11/16/2012

       The Music and Red Russian garlic planted last November were cloves planted from single bulbs obtained from prior neighbor and gardener Jan Watson.

please see:  http://fromseedtoscrumptious.blogspot.com/2012/11/planting-more-garlic.html

Each of the plants coming up now should make bulbs of six or more cloves, which will be separated and replanted in the fall of this year, 2013.  So by harvest time of early summer 2014, I should have good crops of both strains.
   

   
      The garlic shown above was from small heads of garlic found in the spring of 2012, and planted in this little area to see what would happen.  The plants look good, but small.  They will need to be dug soon, teased apart to separate to individual plants, then replanted on four inch centers.  These may serve as part of my green garlic supply, where you eat the whole young plant instead of waiting for bulb production.
       Two years ago, my garlic supply stored very well for months and months.  I was still eating nice full garlic cloves into May.  The crop for 2012 has been very tasty, but the storage quality has been iffy.  At this point, many of the cloves in bulbs are dry and shriveled.  The rocambole variety however stored very well, but alas, it has been eaten as they were the best bulbs.  The papers of the garlic bulbs of this past harvest were very thin and fragile even when the bulbs were fresh.  I have read that that is an indication that the bulbs will not store well.  And they didn't.
      So luckily, I have tons and tons of young garlic shoots coming up that were started from bulbils.  Some will be used for green garlic, and some will be used for cloves to start next year's crop.

please see: http://fromseedtoscrumptious.blogspot.com/2012/12/umbils-of-garlic.html

Started from garlic umbils 12/14/2012

Closer shot as of March 18th, 2013

      The low growing plant in this picture is chickweed, a wild plant that is quite welcome in a spring salad.  So it won't bee in this garlic bed for very much longer.

Garlic Update

Garlic cloves planted December 14th, 2012

      These smallest of my garlic cloves were broadcast in an empty cold frame on December 14th, about five weeks ago.  They were just on the surface, then covered with an inch or two of well aged leaf mold.  An inch of good garden dirt would have been a good alternative.  The following shot shows their progress to this morning:

Sprouted garlic, January 18th, 2012

      The much larger cloves that were planted directly in the garden, are just now beginning to sprout, and do not have the darker green color of the cold frame garlic sprouts:

Some yellowish sprouts just breaking the soil

      The cold frame seems to be really helping to get the undersized cloves started.
     

Umbils of Garlic

      You thought you were done reading about garlic.  I thought I was done writing about garlic.  But a couple of days ago I was cleaning up the porch and found some garlic seed heads that I had kept from the summer.  Not one to waste anything garlic, I decided to clean them up and plant them since I have some open space in a cold frame at the park.

Umbil of Garlic,  December 18th,  2012

      I found a helpful website today: http://organicgarlicbc.com/Organic_Garlic_BC/Garlic_Bulbils_and_Rounds_For_Sale_in_2012.html.  It was there that I first saw the term umbil, defined as the seed head of hard necked garlics.  The umbils are full of little individuals bulbils, which can be planted to grow into full garlic bulbs over a two to three year period.

Umbil separated into individual bulbils

Five umbils and many larger bulbils

Hopefully the last of any garlic to plant

      I was encouraged to plant these bulbils, knowing that I had a nice empty spot at a park cold frame from where the glass panels had been stored over the summer.

Bulbils sprinkled on top, mushroom soil to follow

Open space used

      Garlic is extremely cold hardy and does not require the cover of the cold frames.  I just had that space available and weed free, so in they go.  I also expect that the cold frame will help the bulbils to germinate better in the mid to later part of December.
      Is the trouble worth the effort?  I just went back through previous posts about garlic, and found that I had planted bulbils last December 15th:

       The picture above shows the garlic planted from last year, though the cold frame itself was moved to a different location and the cardoon plants were transplanted.  I pulled a lot of the bulbs that grew, and promptly forgot to keep track of the experiment.  Luckily I somehow lost track of these garlic plants, so I can follow their progress.

A closer shot of the top left corner

      This garlic plant was pulled from the bunch of plants in the previous photo.  It could be used at this stage as green garlic, using it like a scallion.  Slices of the garlic "scallion" would have a delicious garlic flavor, and can be used as if it were clove garlic.  I may dig, separate, and replant the shoots next spring, hoping to have some full sized bulbs in July.  If not July of 2013, certainly July of 2014.  If it were to take that long, I think I would eat the second year garlic as green garlic.  

      Finally, in the article from the link above, the author suggests that their garlic kept much better when the seed stalks were allowed to remain on the garlic plant until harvest.  Like a good reader, I cut most of my garlic scapes off this early summer.  And have a bunch of garlic with lousy wrappers.  Coincidence?  I don't know, but next year the scapes will stay.

      My wife just sneezed.  She will be eating some raw garlic to see if she can cut short an oncoming cold.  Google "garlic cold remedy" for some ideas.

Gobs of Garlic

      I have always been a good procrastinator.  Why do today that which you can put off until tomorrow?  At some point you finally come to the end of the line, and then the project has to be done.  As in the garlic cloves I separated earlier in the season to replant for next year.

Gobs of Garlic Cloves, December 14th,  2012

      These are the secondary sized garlic cloves.  I already planted most of the premium sized cloves, as the feeling seems to be that the larger the clove planted, the larger the full bulb harvested.  So some of your best looking garlic should be saved to be replanted.  These secondary cloves, as I call them, will hopefully still make quite respectable bulbs by next June or July.  By waiting so long to get these in the ground, I am testing the adage: "Plant garlic until the shortest day of the year, harvest by the longest day of the year".   I have the shortest day beat by at least a week.
      The next problem is how and where does one plant this mountain of cloves?  The first answer should have been the compost pile, but that only occurred to me after the fact.  If this planting is successful, what am I going to do with a whopping bumper crop of garlic next summer?  I guess become the number one garlic producer in New Castle County.  Back to planting, the faster the job, the better.

Garlic bed to be

      This bed was very productive this summer, with the tomatoes tied to the stakes, and a row of pepper plants in front.  If I plant the garlic in front, it should not delay whatever I want to plant along the stakes in early May.  The fastest way to get the cloves in the ground is to make a couple of furrows, then drop in cloves.

Did not get rid of enough

Entire row

      Wow, that was a lot of garlic. But.....

I still have half a box!

      Still did not think of the compost pile, so where could more cloves go.  Well right in the next bed.

Clean up required

Three rows in the one bed

Soil fluffed back over the two beds

      There, that looks nice.  And was a lot faster than bending over and planting all of those cloves individually.  Some of the cloves were fairly dry and thin, so I suspect that less than half will actually sprout.  At least that is a hope.  So, done for the day?  Not so fast buster.  That still leaves the last box of the smaller cloves on the porch.  What are you going to do with them?

Smallest cloves in a cold frame

      This is the cold frame that the voles cleared for me in the last few weeks.  The garlic does not need the protection of the frame, but why not use it.  I can always lift the frame later and move it to a different location.  The garlic will probably chase the voles from this frame as a bonus.

Last of the cloves, really

      Again, to plant the cloves as quickly as possible, I just tossed them by hand into the frame.  Rather than pushing them into the soil, I figured I would just add a layer of one year old leaf mold on top of the cloves. 

Last year's leaf pile just sitting around, only a few feet away

Finished, and it is only December 14th

      Wow. Done. Really.  There certainly is enough garlic planted to be able to use some in the spring or early summer as green garlic if my supply of eating garlic runs out.  This last bed of garlic planted will probably be edible in its second year.  Meaning that the bulbs will be pulled in late June, stored for a couple of months, then be broken down to cloves to be replanted in the fall of 2013.  Those cloves should produce edible bulbs by June of 2014.  A renewable crop.  And so delicious.