Ok, Boots...you got straw mulch or something on your's now...mine is coming up through bare ground now cuz the soil's not warm yet.

MHG-that's you, from now on, MooreHaven Gardens, cuz I'm too lazy to type all that!

I shouldn't mulch my garlic til the temps are warmer, right?

goldpearl...must be alot warmer there in Texas now...congrats!

Baby elephants, huh? Are ya growing them, too?

Pearl, I'm envious...(..that was your intent with teasin' us like that, wasn't it....?)...and were you from Iowa at one time?

Sprout, I'll where the initials proudly, ty. Kinda like the way it looks in type, actually....hahaha !!!
And anytime will be fine now in your area, I'm thinking. Now it's about moderating soil temp.s and moisture retention.

Another windy, rainy, cool day here.....but the lettuce likes it.

MHG,

Rainy, cool here, too.

Too yucky right now to go out & do what I'd hoped to do outside, but my lettuce is still inside & I have more seeds to plant inside, anyway.

Looks like the housework will have to wait, too, as the seeds take precedence!

After all, if ya don't get the seeds planted, they will never sprout!

The dust & the laundry grows on it's own!

hahahaha !!!! I'm gonna qoute you the next time my wife looks at me cross-eyed about not doing my "kept-man" chores before I head for the greenhouse!!!

Hi there everyone.

An Italian patient I had once told me to cut the scapes off of the tops of my garlic, this would allow the bulbs to get bigger.

I have 3 varieties. One is French, hardneck.
The other I got from an Ohio Garlic Champion, it is a hardneck, not as tasty as the French.
But I didn't get all of the scapes off of them and I have volunteers everywhere. It's okay, I have garlic planted in with Oregano as a ground cover on a bank.

I was thinking of just letting the sprouts stay where they are and grow into future garlic plants.

On my Elephant garlic, I leave those little side bulbs in the ground to make future harvests. Of course, I'm lucky in that I use my garlic in the landscape, not set beds, so they can stray. At least I think I'm lucky.

MooreHaven, do you have any recommendations for me. I let the leaves mulch my garlic. I basically don't do anything to garlic except pull it, cut the scapes off. Perhaps I should put some bone meal or something on mine?

I enjoy your posts too1

It rained here all morning but is now starting to brighten up outside and the rain has stopped for now.
Lisa--I mulched the garlic in when I planted it last fall when the ground was still warm. I believe it keep the ground warmer all winter. It's like with my carrots I don't harvest them at all but just harvest them from the ground all winter. I do this by mulching the ground over the carrots with a least a foot of grounded up leaves and grass clippings. The ground stays workable under the mulch all winter.

Hi Wasr
To fert. .....or not to fert,.....well, without actually seeing them, I'll leave it up to you. But here's what I would be looking for; do you have healthy green top growth? Besides the yellow frost bite that it might have on some leaf tips, does it look healthy? A slight yellow tint shouldn't nessasarily be taken as a nutriant difficiancy, but a noticeable yellowing of the leaves would have me looking at the need to feed. How healthy does everything else look that is growing with it? Basicly we're talking nitrogen, your bone meal is a slow release organic. If nothing else, your nitecrawlers will thank you.

Cutting scapes. There's a couple of lines of thought there.
Cut them after they coil, diverting growing energy back down to the bulbs, and you "may" see a 25% bulb size increase in some varieties... IF you've actually kept records of your harvested bulb sizes overall from previous years to factually compare to....
I personally don't do this unless I'm harvesting the scapes for someone who's looking to cook with them. I wait until they have straightened and the bulbils look ready to burst.
And here's why.
You have to remember that I grow for resale, which means I sell shelf life. Now altho a larger bulb sells better, they won't store as well in relation to how much they dehydrate. ( ...and for those of you following along here thinking you're gonna sharp-shoot me; yes, some varieties inherently store longer than others, but this is a general overview....) By diverting the energy back to the bulb, the ratio of water to mass becomes a detroment for me as I like to brag my 12 month(+) shelf life to produce managers. That's also why when recomending a garlic purchase for a cook, I point towards the smaller, uglier, "tighter" bulbs.
By letting the plant go thru a longer "natural" life cycle, not only did the scape ''harden-off" (key word there), but the bulb does also. Instead of being in a growth spurt when the top growth is starting to think about dry-down, the bulb is thinking about being ready for a long winter's nap. It's a chemistry thing; please don't make me use big words I can't pronounce, let alone spell.
Now that is not to say that if you are using your garlic in the kitchen at a rate that you don't have any to throw away before you run out, then go for the big bulbs.

And you brought up an often over-looked side value of hardneck garlics.....some have the most interesting "blooms". I have yet to see two true varieties have the same "flower". More people should use them as ornimentals, just remember like any other plant that you don't want to "seed" your bed, you have to harvest the seed head before they release.

Elephant corms ( ....little side bulbs...) - soak them in water for 4-5 days, then plant them; you'll get a better sprout rate, they take alot of moisture to soften the outer shell to "hatch". This is true with your garlic "seed" also. It's why you see seed "green" so much later than clove "green" .

Boots - Winter mulching carrots....you rock !!! I like somebody beside's myself still using my grandmother's winter storage methods. I do the same with my "spring" carrot planting....plant my seed after the ground temp. is too cold in the fall/early winter to germinate, cover, wait out the winter with my feet up by the woodstove, uncover as soon as I dare in the very early spring.....Walla !! Carrots sprouting while everybody else is still waiting for their soil to dry up enough to play in.

Sorry it took me so long to respond with so little....I've been going back and forth thru e-mail today with a guy in Lousianna begging me outta my "Private Stock" for a wild pig roast he's getting ready to put on....I give, Gary, it's on it's way.....

MHG,

You can quote me anytime you want...after all,

The dust & the laundry DOES grow on it's own!

Everybody knows that! Mine's still growing!

The sun came out here now & I plan on goin' outside soon!

Investigation of garlic beds and they look terrific. All green. Some are too close together. SHould I thin them? If so, when, Now or when it is time to pick them?

Depends.... if it's eating stock, then thin, and anytime they get big enough for you to get ahold of... if it's volunteer seed, let it go, the bulbs ("rounds" actually) won't get big enough for crowding to bother it.

**A "round" is a garlic that hasn't got enough growing seasons under it's belt to have achived sufficiant size to divide into cloves. These are often considered a chef's delight in their larger stage as they are one big chunk of garlic.

I plant some garlic cloves, but always plant all my scapes. Some years I eat the fat single cloves-aforming that were scapes, others I just let em grow.

My snow has receded and the first garlic tops have just started to emerge.

In my mind volunteer garlic is a double bonus. They are wonderful! Like garlic flavored green onions. I use them this time of year in everything I can (and in the fall.) I have some top setting garlic (supposed to have bigger seeds but I don't really know about that) that I use for this specifically. Yum! Also I love garlic scapes. Hard to not harvest them and eat them but then if you harvest them all then you have no new "seeds" for next year !

Ellen

MHG,

Good to see that you have your job back! HaHa

I'm reading and loving everyone chiming in with their updates.

Seems that everyone had good sucsess overwintering. And our southern gardeners are showing off! HaHa Tall as Elephant's knees! Woo Hoo!

I lost 12, but that's okay. I kinda figured I would lose that row. I'm gonna let one or two make scapes and let them fall where they may.

The rest I'm digging, and eating and replanting. Okay, I'm getting ahead of myself. I could get a storm and they all wash away. I better not count my garlic till I pull it!

Yep, this is sooo much fun!

Ok, my fellow garlic heads.....here's a query for you......who can google Garden Symphylan, Scutigerellaim Maclata, Garden Centipede ( no, not the 1.5" dark brown ones you see crawling across your kitchen floor in the summer ) first.
While its raining here tomorrow, as a preview to the cold front moving in, I'll tell you a true story. But you'll need to look those up first.

Lisa, let's not call it a job, I'm havin' way too much fun for it to be a job...haha !! And why not harvest your seed and pot it indoors thru the winter this year instead of just letting them fall? Gives you a nice fresh cut garlic chive for those holiday potato dishes.

Can anyone tell me if garlic will survive temps as low as 21º without protection or not? Unforunately I've got 4 days in a row their calling for night time temps to get down that far.My fall planted garlic is 8-10 inches tall and even my spring planted garlic is starting to show spikes coming up now.