She's probably working and forgot. She'll be back soon. Bean works 3 jobs last I heard. Don't know how she even has time to garden!

What a crazy, fanatical bunch of gardeners this is! I haven't been on here much this spring, but every time I drop by I am amazed at just how fanatical we all are!

I uncovered the garlic bed last weekend to find a bunch of yellow shoots poking their noises up into the mulch. Today, all 77 of them are deep green and some are up to 3" tall already. Not one was lost over the winter.

I gave them an inch of compost, some water, and put a row cover over them. Everybody's happy today.

BTW: about delayed fall planting... the last two years I have planted my garlic the week of Thanksgiving. The year before last I rolled back the heavy mulch layer and planted them into the only unfrozen patch of earth in our yard. Last year I think the ground stayed thawed into December.

Trying to link something so bear with me here, please:

Posted April 27, 2007 10:52 PM
We have grown the same garlic for at least 3 years and I don't really know what it is. Our friend gave us some to get us started and we keep growing it from the leftover cloves. I asked my wife to call Sue and ask her what it is. She said it is Italian purple hardneck. Here a few pics I took tonight. What do you guys think? It does give scapes, really curly big ones.



Muddy knees David! Compost is my friend



Posted April 27, 2007 11:03 PM Hide Post
That looks just like the garlic I planted for spring growing pest control.

Moorehaven Gardens should know what it is.

Mine is from the grocery store. So don't know what the real name is. And mine grows a scape too. When I devided it, there was a stem piece in the middle, meaning a scape had once lived there.

Did you just dig that out of the ground tonight or what?

Now you know I'm interested in this stuff!

Post
No, that is last year's garlic. Too bad most of it is sprouting now. It won't go to waste. I am going to plant it around my maters to ward off the evil spirits Wink


Muddy knees David! Compost is my friend


Posted April 27, 2007 11:38 PM Hide Post
I never saw anyone save garlic with the roots and leaves still on. Must have worked out well, if they are just starting to sprout now.


Posted April 28, 2007 01:42 AM Hide Post
I confess to growing too much garlic last year. I braided a bunch of it and gave it to friends and family. There was a half bushel basketof it left, with a dozen that I just plopped in there to use, butI never ran out. We down-sized the garlic patch this year.


Muddy knees David! Compost is my friend


Posted April 28, 2007 02:13 AM Hide Post
Down size means? Only a 100, or what?
MooreHaven Gardens

Posted April 28, 2007 05:42 AM Hide Post
oh2fly -
You didn't grow too much.........you just didn't eat enough of it...

Great pictures by the way !! I wish I could post some...oh welll....( guess you'll have to e-mail me if you want to see them )
But I did print them off, pressed it against my forehead, and here's what I got........

It's a Purple Stripe variety. Hardneck. Probably not a Standard as the cloves shown are more blunt-headed than cresent-mooned. That takes us to Marbled or Glazed subvarieties. I'll lean towards Glazed as the cloves shown aren't as elongated as a Standard or Marbled might be. Brown clove wrappers with a hint of rose also points that direction also.
Beyond that; who knows. What you call Italian I'd call Brown Tempest. As I've said before, whatever pet name you call it is up to you. Don't get hung up on it, that's more about advertising and marketing than anything else.
.......that will be $1 please......Wink

Now, let's take a look at the garlic in a little more clinical viewpoint.
First thing I notice is that it was harvested I'd guess about a week past prime. The clues are in the picture of the unwrapped one on the left. ( I'm not critiqueing your garlic oh2fly, just making an observation based on my personal experiance ) The clue is in the rotted-off sheath left on the stalk. We know it rotted-off because of the black mold stain and the underlying sheath has dirt adheared to it. The exposed sheath is also past prime as it also is deteriorating. From the distance of leaf to bulb and the exposure discolorations on the stalk we can tell we are most likely looking at skins #2 and #3.
Next observation is that your soil probably leans towards silt/clay and was wetter than you would have liked when you harvested. This is seen in how it adheared to the bulb and roots. The mold stain also points to you having been held-up in your harvest due to wet weather.
My next obsevation is more cosmetic personal preference. Minimal manacuring of the harvested plant. Alot of why people's garlic doesn't store as long as they would like is that it's been "over cleaned". Now oh2fly went super minimal compared to me, I would have clipped the roots to about an inch and rubbed the stubs against the palm of my hand to remove the dirt, and then trimmed the leaves back to the stalk, cutting the stalk off at 8" - 10", then bundled and hung. As oh2fly is in Oregon, his weather patterns at harvest time tend to start getting wetter, so trimming the leaves and roots thusly would help dry-down curing. Drying leaves and roots will literally suck moisture out of the air, making them more susceptiable to molds and fungus. Also the dirt is still on the wrappers, which tells us that almost all of them are still intact post-harvest, which is a very good thing. The more skins left wrapping the bulb, the slower the dehydration in storeage. By leaving the roots mostly intact limits the dehydration thru the basal plate, and leaving the stalk long lets the leaves shrink down tight around it, helping to seal it. You've gotten 8-9 months typical storage out of it, a good indicator that it was grown and cured well.

Beyond that - good looking garlic. You should be proud of the results of your efforts. If you would like it to keep until you get this year's harvested for the table, finish cleaning it, break it down to cloves, and then freeze it, taking out only what you need when you're cooking. Simply refrigerating it at this point won't stop the sprouting, the inside of your refridgerator is too warm and humid. Makes the garlics think it's spring-time.
Good job. Smiler


If you can grow food, you have a cosmic obligation to feed those that can't.

MooreHaven Gardens

Posted April 28, 2007 07:15 AM Hide Post
Lisa - what do you think about keeping your spring garlic thread bumped to the top to catch posts like this? Would have made a great addition, especially as he has such nice informative pictures to share. Your thread/your call.......I'd be willing to help keep watch with you.


If you can grow food, you have a cosmic obligation to feed those that can't.


Posted April 28, 2007 12:05 PM Hide Post
Hi Moorehaven,

oh2fly knows there is a garlic thread. He chose to post separately.

Pondering how to answer your question. Yep, it would have been a nice addition to the garlic thread, but heck can there be too many garlic threads?

I like having one thread running so when we need to look up something, we know right where to go.

Is there a way to link this thread to that one?

Or copy this thread to that one for future reference. I want everyone to be able to learn from what you've posted.

Don't know.

I don't try to keep the garlic thread at the top. I figure people will post about garlic when they want and know there is a thread running if they choose to post there.

Beyond that...........


Posted April 28, 2007 12:06 PM Hide Post
Wow, MHG, you should start a garlic CSI show. Thank you! If you want help with posting pics, just ask. Trust me, if I can do it you sure can. You are right about the water. The garlic was sharing a bed with other veggies and they needed water while the garlic was needing to be dry. So, when my DW watered, everybody got some. This year we will watch it better. My crop is down to 80 from 100 last year. If anyone wants some cloves from this, let me know. I share! My Nikon gets the credit for the pics. Great camera.


Muddy knees David! Compost is my friend

Well that kinda worked. Don't have a clue what I did. Was trying to link a garlic post to this thread.

Good grief.

Well Moorehaven, when you come in for lunch, help me fix this mess!

Lisaann, want me to put the 3 pics up here?

Yes please, and thanks. Don't want anyone to miss all this good stuff!

...........ummmmmmmmm..........fix what mess...????

oh....almost forgot....Dave, thanx for the offer, near as I can tell, my picture/avitar/blue reply tab problem is because I've never been able to get this PC to allow Java script, I suspect that I've never "stumbled" across the proper box to check/uncheck in a setting somewhere. At my age, I'm one of the "generic" computer-user crowd..........just enough knowledge to be dangerous.

Lisa, consider this my "bump", your turn.....hahaha !!!

Well, Lisaann, I think the 'grocery store' garlic planting may have been a bust. I snuck a few minutes to go out to the garden today (away from construction duty ) The tips of the garlic are turning yellow and I couldn't resist myself...I pulled one up and it looked basically like the clove I originally planted but w/ roots and green growth on top. They have been in the ground since, I believe, Feb 20th.

Oh well, I remain excited about the planting stock I ordered and we'll see how that goes.

Well, I got a truckload of composted goat manure today from my friend who raises goats. It is full of worms and looks awesome for gardening. I side dressed the garlic and spread the rest over the main beds. I got them all covered with nothing left except enough to put a 4" layer in my compost pile. Here is a pic of the garlic. I counted them and I am down to 48 from 80 I had last year. I hope they are all big ones.I am planting some of my sprouted ones just to see the difference between the fall planted ones and the May planted ones. Never tried that before.

What attractive garlic!

My #10 sprout just peeked up from the soil today. That means 10 of 10 have now sprouted. Cool! They're just a few inches high, plus the baby just peeking his little head out.

Make sure you guys talk up what happens when it's time to harvest, ok? I'm right behind you and want to do this right!

I checked on my garlic over the weekend and it too is coming back strong. I think I might have lost 1 or 2 of the plants, but the rest are now between 10 and 12 inches long (the greens that is).

Organic - don't give up on that garlic yet, a little yellow on your tips is pretty normal even in the best of soils under the best of growing conditions (you'll notice oh2 even has a little on his), and your bulb growth comes later on after it's done producing top growth.

Oh2fly - dat's sum purty lookin' garlic ya got thar'. I am concerned as to how "raw" or "wet" your manure looks in that photo though. Be very careful working with anything that hasn't "aged" at least a year when side dressing like that. Fresh is good when using eggs, but not manure.

Liz - when those of us below you location-wise start talkin', it'll be your cue to start watchin', you should be a couple weeks behind me when the time comes.

Thanks! I have to believe my friend about the age of the manure and that it won't burn my plants. That would suck to lose it all now, but I have faith. It does look fresh in the pic. The pile was wet and that makes it darker.
Edit: I just remembered what my friend said. He said that the manure has been rained on since last fall and that a lot of the nitrogen has been washed out. That's why it won't burn. I am pretty sure that concentrated N is what burns, like fresh chicken coop shavings will do.

My garlic is doing better than anything in my garden, so far, but the tomatoes are just getting started.


197 bulbs should keep me stocked. lol

Dave