Kitchen Garden Forum

Well, 2011 has been a lot drier than I would normally like for good garlic growth. Whilst I watered and fed a couple of times during the really dry parts of March, I haven't given them as much as I'd have thought they needed.

However the crop this year has had some bulbs as big as I've ever managed (some a good 3.5 inches wide). The only other things to mention are:

• I experimented in using some sand in the soil around some of them - details here.
  Johnboy asked me to report back and the results were...inconclusive! I got both big and small bulbs from plants which had grown in each type of soil.
  However it's possible that in a wetter winter & spring, the sand might have made more of a difference.
• I ended up planting the cloves deeper than normal
  Normally, the bulbs are poking out of the ground by the time I lift them, but this year they were all below the surface. It may be that this helped them survive the drier conditions

Below are some of the better ones. Hope the rest of you have had similar success with yours:

Hi Colin, I think you might be right about the deeper planting, good photos, well the garlic looks good, I love it fresh like that. Thanks for sharing your tips, I put sand under my saffron bulbs and they seem to be doing well.

Our garlic is pathetic this year as is the elephant garlic which we hadn't tried before. No elephant about it!

The onions and shallots are doing well though!

i have had some great results with my onions this year and they are now drying out in the shed, im going to leave my garlic in for another week or two, although i must say the plants are looking good and the leaves are yellowing at the tips.

glallotments wrote:Our garlic is pathetic this year as is the elephant garlic which we hadn't tried before. No elephant about it!
The onions and shallots are doing well though!

Sorry to hear that glottments.

I don't grow onions, but our Longor shallots have also done quite well this year too. It's interesting that onions worked for you but not garlic.

Note though that 3 of my garlic bulbs seemed to have the white rot that's mentioned elsewhere on KG forums. Don't remember seeing that before.

Nature's Babe wrote:Hi Colin, I think you might be right about the deeper planting, good photos, well the garlic looks good, I love it fresh like that. Thanks for sharing your tips, I put sand under my saffron bulbs and they seem to be doing well.

HI NB, the deeper planting was a complete accident I think (or serendipity). However I shall consider it again this autumn.

Funnily enough, we've never tried using our garlic in its fresh state. I guess you could also make some good stir fries with the green'ish tops that way. Presumably the cloves are full & juicy, but with a less concentrated flavour? I'd read that it was important to let the bulbs dry intact (i.e. don't cut either the tops or any of the roots off till they're completely dry). Guess this would help both the drying, but also retain as much flavour & oomph as possible?

I'm impressed you've got saffron growing. We bought some bulbs a few years back. Got enough stamens for a very small paella and hardly any bulbs made it through to the next year (probably poor husbandry on my part).

Mine were mulched with straw overwinter Colin, they sprouted new leaves and then my partner mowed them thinking they were grass. hoping they survived that and will come up again in the autumn!

By the way, we did have some casualties.

Please see this posting

My elephant garlic was the only variety that did reasonably well this year. Garlic hates dry springs followed by wet - promotes rot. But yours look better than mine, Colin.

Just lifted the garlic. All have bulbed up nicely. About half have what looks like a coating of a mixture of soil and a white "mould". It peels off easily to leave normal bulbs. Any ideas? I've binned it rather than composting it - this seemed safest.

Regards

Ian

Ian in Cumbria wrote:Just lifted the garlic. All have bulbed up nicely. About half have what looks like a coating of a mixture of soil and a white "mould". It peels off easily to leave normal bulbs. Any ideas? I've binned it rather than composting it - this seemed safest.

Did it look anything like this?
viewtopic.php?p=94811#p94811

i have just lifted my garlic and all have bulbed nicely, its my first time of growing garlic and i have to say wow, what a wonderful aroma when lifting, i have placed a cane across 2 corners of the shed (inside) and tide the leaves in a loop and left them to hang dry, dont know if this is the right way or not but it seemed to work for the onions.
any idea's what i can now put in its place in the plot, i was thinking of either more carrots or more beetroot, maybe something that would be ready just before christmas would be nice but what ?

I suggest, carrot Autumn king, beetroot, or some chard or spring greens, or fennel is best planted after midsummer, a catch crop of radishes/ spring onions between the rows ? the radish would be grown and harvested before the others spread and grow.

Hi Colin

Sorry for delay in reply - been away for a few days. The "coating" on some of my garlic didn't really look like the link you posted. I'll see if I can get some photos tomorrow.

Regards

Ian

I've lifted our garlic today - best crop we've ever grown (thank you JB for starting it off last year ), even though we had a few with white rot. They'll get used up first.

Onions were excellent this year too, again a few with white rot, so new planting places next year. we had to left them earlier than I would have like because the rabbits were eating them. They didn't leave enough tops for us to plait them!