Thursday, November 12, 2015

Garlic Planting 2015

I finally got the garlic planted on November 6 this year. Given the mild weather, this is certainly not late and maybe a little early. I want the cloves to develop a root system before the ground freezes but I do not want to see any significant foliage growth, to avoid freeze damage during the winter. The beds were prepared with generous amounts of compost, as well as Garden Tone, bone meal, crab meal, kelp meal, and rock dust. I use a chopped straw for a mulch which has worked adequately in the past. Five types of hardneck garlic were planted.

The garlic went in my raised beds with a 6 inch depth, which is plenty for growing garlic. For most of the varieties I used a four per square (foot) spacing, which means they are spaced 6 inches (15 cm.) apart each direction. The Chesnok Red has become a much smaller garlic so I used 5 per square for that garlic. For the five varieties, I planted a total of 19 squares which yields over 89 bulbs. That is more than I can consume/preserve before they go bad, so I try to give some away, particularly to gardeners who may want to try growing garlic. We’re visiting my daughter in two weeks and a bag of garlic is going to be one of the gifts I bring. I hope she is thrilled. Maybe we will make Freddy’s Roast Potatoes.


German Red is a large Rocambole garlic that averages 4-5 cloves per head and is very cold tolerant. I purchased my seed stock last September at the MDI Garlic Festival. It was grown by Goosefoote Farm in Vermont. The harvest this year was very good, with very large heads. Largest was 4 oz. with 4 cloves or an ounce (28 g.) per clove. Goosefoote was at the fair again this year and at least from an eye test, their garlic was much smaller than the year before. Just part of the variability in growing garlic.

German Extra Hardy is another large (3-4 large cloves per head), cold tolerant garlic. It is considered a Porcelain with a white skin but with purplish cloves. Being a Porcelain it is supposed to store well for a hardneck, but I have had the opposite experience. The cloves soften and turn brown on me long before the other varieties. I set aside my seed stock in August when I cleaned up the dried plants. By planting time this year, some of the cloves had already shriveled. I learned my lesson last year and brought along a couple spare bulbs, which I needed to get enough healthy cloves to plant my four squares. I am thinking I probably should purchase some new seed stock to replace my own.

I wanted to try a new garlic this year and decided to look for Phillips at the MDI Garlic Festival. I found some very nice bulbs grown by Salty Dog Farm in Milbridge, Maine. Phillips is named after Phillips, Maine where it was grown around the area and is hard to find outside of  Maine.  It is a Rocambole garlic that was collected by the Scatterseed Project from the farm of Raymond Rowe. His seed stock originally came from a family in Rome, New York, whose ancestors brought it from Italy when they immigrated to work on the Erie Canal. So it has a nice Northeast/Italian history. The heads were good size with 6-7 tan-skinned cloves per head.  Despite being a Rocambole, it is supposed to keep fairly long for a hardneck, which is certainly admirable if true.















Duganski (originally from Kazakhstan) was new last year, from seed stock purchased from Territorial. It did very well for me this year and produced some beautiful bulbs. It is considered a Purple Stripe and you can see the beautiful purple cloves inside the white skin of the head. My heads and the seed stock I bought last year has a white outer wrapper, not the purple striped skins shown in catalogs. The cloves are long and slender and taper to a very sharp tip, which makes it harder for dunces like me to plant the basal end up. And it is supposed to last a long time in storage, which is a plus. We will see.





OK, I was going to replace the Chesnok Red with the Phillips seed stock I bought, but a funny thing happened on the way to the garden. I can not find the Spanish Roja garlic. No idea where I put it. This year I left it in the garden too long and did a poor job of drying it, so maybe I tossed it all in the compost in a fit of disgust. So Chesnok Red gets a reprieve, which is alright since it is a great garlic. Since the cloves are so small, these were planted 5 per square, but only 3 squares were planted. Chesnok Red is another Purple Stripe from the Republic of Georgia and you can see the beautiful color. It is also supposed to be one of the best cooking garlics and also stores well.

The reason I was going to pass over planting Chesnok Red this year was the fact that the heads seem to be getting smaller each year, rather than larger. The theory is that you select the largest and finest heads each year for your seed garlic. You are practicing selection and eventually your garlic is optimally adapted to your soil and climate and will produce humongous, astounding results. It has not quite worked out that way. The Chesnok Red is smaller, the German Extra Hardy does not keep well, the Spanish Roja is not as large. Apparently I am not alone.

While searching for descriptions of my garlic among web sites of various seed garlic growers, I encountered, one after another, descriptions by small growers describing puzzling changes in the character of their garlic. The big suppliers will have their usual boilerplate descriptions, but many of the smaller growers like to describe what happened on the farm this year and supply a personalized description of their garlic. Many are reporting that their garlic stock is changing. Color, size, clove count, whatever. It struck me because I have never seen that pointed out by growers but have noticed it in my own garlic.

So the garlic is safely in the ground. Just a little more clean up and then I can concentrate on the seed catalogs that are starting to arrive! We’re on to 2016.

7 comments:

  1. I always buy new seed garlic these days. Rust is a problem in my garlic every year and I'm always hoping that "clean" seed garlic will help. It doesn't really seem to make a difference, but the one year when I grew both new seed garlic and some of my best garlic from the year before and found that the new stuff was at least twice the size of the saved stuff convinced me to stick with the new stock.

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    1. Probably a good idea but can get expensive. I'm thinking I will have to buy new stock next year for at least 2 of the varieties I grow.

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  2. I have only ever grown Garlic twice and both times the heads & cloves came out very small - smaller than those I planted. This is the Law of Diminishing Returns in action! I think it must be very difficult for commercial producers to ensure that their varieties remain true to type when grown in large quantities.

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    1. At least cross-pollination is not an issue, but you do have to be organized and keep records so you know which is which. What I found strange is the number of growers reporting changes in their stock that they have grown for years. Not just size but color, shape, etc.

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  3. I've also read about the whole selection process with garlic & how each year it will improve, but haven't really seen this in action yet. In fact, what I did notice was that none of the bulbs I harvested were as big as the "mother" bulbs that I purchased at the garlic festival last year. I'm thinking that I didn't amend the soil enough, water enough or the spacing was too tight (5") - but am not sure which. If it had only been one or two varieties, I would think they just didn't do well in my garden, but not all 5 new varieties. I decided to leave the spacing the same, but improve on the other two. It will be a long wait until next year to see if my results are better.

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    1. Also be sure to fertilize next spring when the foliage comes up. They need a lot of nitrogen at that point. And they don't like competition from weeds.

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  4. I have seen some of my garlic cultivars get smaller and some get larger as I select from them each year. I do think some of the difference can be explained by growing conditions and by my cutural practices. Like you mention, the spring application of fertilizer is important as is weed competition, plus I still have a lot to learn about growing garlic well! This year I used fish and seaweed liquid fertilizer in addition to pelleted chicken manure and that seemed to work well.

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