when to plant garlic

I am in the middle of planting my garlic now. I planted two types last weekend. Today I planted some heirloom top sets (photo bottom left) of a variety called "Old Homestead". Also several large heads of cloves that I saved from the Farmer's Market.

There seem to be different ideas on when to plant garlic. The photo above (left) is from my nearby community garden and the garlic is very well sprouted. They must have planted it mid-summer!

I spoke with a farmer at the Farmer's Market recently who said people tend to plant too early. He things it grows better planted late, when the days are cold. The old rule of thumb is to plant your garlic on the shortest day of the year (Dec 21). In my area, you likely can't get a shovel in the ground on that day.

I noticed some volunteer garlic sprouts coming up in my garden this week. Must be some I missed harvesting this summer. They are in the two photos on the right. They probably sprouted a couple weeks ago.

I don't have much experience growing garlic yet. Its only my second year. My cloves were small but very flavorful this year. I have been trying to read what I can find about growing garlic. Here's a nice article from a Cornell site. Of course, a great garlic resource is Patrick's posts at Bifurcated Carrots (by the way, he has more garlic posts than carrot posts).


garlic (Allium sativum)

no scapes :(

I keep checking my garlic for scapes, since I read about them on many gardening blogs and I see them now at the Farmer's Market. This is the first year I have grown garlic. Last fall I planted some of my commercial bulbs from the local supermarket. Sadly, no scapes. I quess I have "softneck garlic".

As Farmer MaryJane explains: Commercial garlic growers from warmer climates (for example, in Gilroy, California) use "softneck" garlic varieties that are readily machine harvested and do not produce scapes. Garlics that are well adapted to colder climates (also known as "hardneck" or "topset" varieties), which also store better and peel more easily than softneck varieties, do produce scapes. Garlic growers cut scapes to enhance bulb growth. The scapes are usually discarded, but recently their value as a unique food has been discovered.

Another new thing for me! I'll have to order some topset garlic for next year.

I did dig down to look at what's going on underground. There is a little garlic bulb forming - that's good news. And yes, those are my fingers - dirty as usual.

Allium sativum

planting and transplanting garlic

Last year I planted a handful of tiny garlic top sets of an heirloom variety called "Old Homestead" from Sand Hill Preservation Center. I planted them in November (photos here) and they sprouted like fine grass shoots. They disappeared later in the winter and spring, but by the end of summer, they were nice sprouts again.

Today I transplanted the little sprouts to my community plot, as I'm hoping I'll get bigger heads with full sun. I dug up and transplanted all the little Old Homestead shoots, spacing them out a bit more. (I went ahead and fertilized before I planted.)

I also planted several heads that I've been saving - 4 of 5 of my biggest heads from this summer. I ended up filling up nearly a whole bed in my plot. Since I hadn't included this in my diagram, I'll have to revise it already - only 2 weeks after I made it.

When I was looking for the fertilizer in the garage this morning, I came across the 4 or 5 garlic heads I'd saved for planting last year. I thought I'd looked everywhere for that! So I planted that today too. About a quarter of it seemed healthy.

I ended up planting about a hundred garlic bulbs, I think. I have visions of lots of home grown garlic next year. The cost per head is so high now (over $1 a head!) at our Farmers Market. I just hope some of mine will be nice big cloves as the teeny little ones are not worth using.

garlic (Allium sativum)

a test garlic

On Sunday I dug a first garlic head to see if they are ripe yet. They plants have turned yellow and brown, but are still standing. The head was bigger than I've ever grown and beautiful creamy white skin. 6 or 8 nice cloves. But the skin had many wrappers and wasn't dry - the inner wrappers were thick and leathery still. So it wasn't ready for harvest. I'll wait a few more weeks to dig any more of them.

Garlic is ready for harvest when the leaf tops begin to dry and bend toward the ground. The presence of three to five wrapper leaves is another indication of maturity. ... Irrigation should be discontinued approximately two weeks
prior to harvest. Univ Kentucky Garlic Fact Sheet

I was disappointed to find many brown spots inside the cloves, even with the perfect skins. I suppose this is mite damage. :( Hopefully the rest don't have the same. Maybe a bad choice to grow garlic where I grew onions last year. Of course, all the irrigation probably hasn't helped either.

garlic (Allium sativum)

fresh tomatoes and garlic

I picked two New Girl tomatoes today. I just made it under the wire as it was the last chance for me to pick a full-sized ripe tomato in the month of July. Its a very late year for tomatoes for me. My parents are having the same problem.

The newspaper reports that the mean Boston temperature has been 2 degrees below normal for the month of July. Also we've had 5.3 inches of rain compared with a normal of 3.0 inches for July. Eighteen of 31 days have had precipitation - almost 60%. It seems to me that there have been a lot cloudy days. Oh well. Good weather for beans and lettuce, but not tomatoes.

The New Girl is a new variety for me. I planted them next to some of my old faithful Early Girls. The New Girl is the winner for producing earlier this year. Not the best tasting tomato. I'm looking forward to a juicy Brandywine or Big Beef.

I dug up one of my garlic bulbs this afternoon. The lower leaves have turned brown and 4 or 5 upper ones are green. The bulb is still too small though. I'll try again later to see if they are ready to harvest.

I sliced the small bulb and put it on my tomatoes. (I also added a big store bought tomato, avocado and some garden dill to make a nice topping for a bed of lettuce greens.) I did think that the garlic was excellent. A pungent fresh garlic flavor. Not sure how long I will actually wait to harvest more of these delicious bulbs. I'm glad I planted a lot!

Solanum lycopersicum, Allium sativum

garlic scapes

This will be another item for my BBQ on Friday. Fresh garlic scapes. I'm deciding how to prepare them - pesto, sauteed, or garlic scape pizza....

Garlic scapes should be picked before they curl around to encourage formation of a larger garlic bulb. I've read that picking them well before they curl gives the most tender scapes. Last year mine were tasty, but tough. Next time I'm at my garden I'll pick all of my scapes. Some are curling back double and some are still straight.

garlic (Allium sativum)

winter garlic

It seems like spring watching my garlic grow.

garlic (Allium sativum)

garlic topsets

I took my macro lens out to check on the garlic top sets I planted last fall. They are growing and there are lots of them, but they sure are tiny. Looks like they will take a couple years to make a bulb.

garlic (Allium sativum)

garlic shoots

Last fall I planted a mix of garlic cloves from my CSA and transplanted many 1 year old top sets. The shoots are now sticking out of the salt hay, nice and green. Lots of them. I've never been able to grow good sized garlic heads and hope these will do well in this new sunny spot this summer.

garlic (Allium sativum)

garlic

I've been clipping off garlic leaves here and there and eating them, either fresh or briefly grilled. Yummy. Stronger than a garlic chive and greener tasting than garlic. Delicious!

Allium sativum

garlic

My garlic's looking pretty scraggly - but at least it made it through the winter. I imagine it will perk up soon. I'm looking for some salt marsh hay to mulch it with, but the hay is hard to find. Next year I'll try to remember to mulch the garlic in the fall.

Allium sativum

BBQ'd pizza with grilled garlic scapes

I picked a big bowl of garlic scapes today. We sauteed them whole in olive oil over the wood fire. Then we chopped and sprinkled them on pizza and grilled the pizza on the fire. The pizza sauce was the last of my garden tomatoes, stored frozen, from last summer. The salad was my first heads of this year's garden lettuce.

Nice to finish the last of last year together with the first of this year.

garlic (Allium sativum)

garlic scapes!

I guess I was wrong about my garlic. A couple weeks ago I concluded they weren't going to make scapes. But look! Scapes. Better late than never.

(Boundary Garlic Farm has good garlic growing info.)

Allium sativum

winter garlic shoots

In my community garden plot, I was pleased to spot some garlic shoots today. These are in an area where I transplanted one year old top sets last fall. They're still tiny, but are up and green. The area I planted with larger bulbs is still snow covered. That's all the plant life I could see in the plot.

garlic (Allium sativum)

garlic

30 little garlic sprouts are poking up under the soggy leaves. Amazing how fast they are growing!

Allium sativum

Skippy and my frozen garlic

I assume the garlic is doing fine down under the snow and ice. 70 days until spring planting, and counting.

Allium sativum
more pictures of skip

planting garlic

I've never planted garlic before, but noticed others with on-line garden journals were doing this now. I found a site with real simple instructions. All I had was my cooking garlic, so I will see how this works. I picked out about 30 big cloves. Maybe the variety will not be right for my area. I put it where my squash was and where I planted lettuce seeds a few weeks ago - only one or two lettuce seedlings came up.

Allium sativum

the snow is gone, briefly

The snow is gone. If it would dry up a little, I could turn over the soil. But - there is some odd weather report for tomorrow for the Boston area. 8 inches of snow? We haven't had that much all winter. Maybe its just a bad dream....

Allium sativum