It's time to plant garlic

Years ago on the east end of LI, Zone 7, I planted garlic from the grocery store some time in October. I didn't pre-soak or do anything special. I also didn't pay attention to the weather, just broke up the heads and put them in whenever I had time and always had good results. I'm about to do the same thing today in Zone 5b, except that I added some dehydrated manure to my raised bed first. Wish me luck!

Pam

HoneyBee, I know that feeling-the stealing and the peeling. LOL Its kind of hard to put the nicest looking cloves in the dirt instead of your food.
Pam, I'll wish YOU luck as that might help me too ? tee hee!

OK, first round of potato onion (multipliers) and garlic went in Sunday. I forgot to check the calendar for the moon phase, but that is when I had time to plant. Did not soak this year, just planted in a good bed. I have more garlic to plant and it is supposed to rain (knock wood) tomorrow. Maybe. So if I have any light left tonight after supper, the rest of the garlic is going in. At the rate things are going, the moon should probably call me in the morning to see what phase I have time for LOL!

My problem is the weather - we haven't had our first frost yet, and the forcast is for it to get into the upper 70's this week. The sweet pepper plants are loaded, so I don't want to pull them while they are still producing fruit - BUT - I need the space to plant garlic!

We usually get frost between Oct 1st and 15th.

As I type this, the leaves are falling like rain.

Sounds kind of pretty!

OK, ya' gotta' rake??

We don't rake-up the leaves from our own trees, rather we leave them to replenish the earth. We do gather leaves from around the neighborhood and add them to the garden. The earthworms change them into usable soil.

whoo-hoo! Garlic finally arrived.

now to read up and find out what to do with it, LOL!

My GARLIC is up already !!

We have snow on the ground, waaaaay early. What's going on here?! We had snow April 1, and now this. No spring, no fall. Bummer!

Pam

Bummer Pfg!

My garlic finally got planted this morning. I'm a little late getting it in but should be okay.

okay, so FINALLY got my cinder block raised bed completed. going to soak tonight.

from what i've read on some of these sites that you all were so nice to leave the links for, i take a gallon of water, mix it with heaping tablespoon of baking soda and 1 tablespoon of seaweed, soak the cloves in there NOT peeled, then plant flat side down/pointed end up two inches below the top of the soil, cap it with copious amounts of mulch (i'm using natural cypress mulch), keep watered, but for the most part leave alone.

is that all correct?


u think i could soak my bulls blood seeds in that solution as well? or should I just put those in the jiffy pots to start out? hate to waste all that water on such a small amount of garlic....

Thanks for boiling it down, SFla. If mine don't come up I'll do that next time. Always nice to know what to do if the simple thing doesn't work... and who ever knows when the luck is about to run out and you suddenly realize that you have to do more than the little you've been getting away with?!

Pam

well, i didn't peel anything. in fact, I plopped them in solution as entire bulbs, with the covering keeping everything connected. I do believe that the covering has to come off before I plant though, right?

"I do believe that the covering has to come off before I plant though, right?"

Not necessarily, SFC. I've planted garlic for more years than I care to admit, setting out cloves of peeled vs unpeeled and never noticed a difference in the two. I'm also among the ranks of those who've never soaked/pre-soaked and have had bumper crops of garlic. I'm of the mind that often times, especially since the Internet, we often get swayed into thinking we must do this, do that, buy all the latest gadgets and try all the "newest" ways (which often-times are just "recycled" and not necessarily new). It seems common to invest more money and time than is really needed to grow a garden, be it food or flowers.

Shoe (low-maintenance preferred)

This message was edited Nov 11, 2011 4:25 PM

I also do nothing ... just plant the garlic cloves and wait ...
I always been sucessfull ... but sure I enjoyed reading about y'all hard work

I planted some garlic saved from what I grew last year and it sprouted in less than a week! The white bunching onions are also very quick to sprout. I separated the tiny Egyptian onion bulbils that I had and those have sprouted as well - looks like a very good year for onions and garlic! Hope to get my purchased garlic planted in about 10 days - still have to finish taking out the tomatoes from that bed.

Well, I finally pulled out the sweet pepper plants and set the garlic on Monday.

I chose 100 of the largest and best-looking cloves, and when I was done planting, I had 12 left! So... 88 will be the count for this year. I'm holding onto the leftovers incase some don't sprout.

When I saw this thread on planting garlic, I had to read it because I love garlic and like to hear what varieties other people like and grow. I had just one variety for 10 years that I got from a friend who had purchased it at the local co-op store, so I don't know what it is specifically except that it is a softneck. Then I discovered there were lots more kinds and I went kind of crazy planting more than 12 different varieties, both hardneck and softneck, about 800 plants in a year and selling at the farmer's market. After 5 years living and breathing garlic all year long, my field got hit with a garlic fungus so I scaled way back and don't sell any, only grow for my family.

I had never soaked my garlic cloves prior to planting and all my plants sprouted and grew just fine. However, because of the fungus, I looked into ways of ameliorating the problem. One thing I found was that soaking the garlic in baking soda water allows you to remove the outer coating of a clove easily and you can then see if there are any visible spores on the individual clove. Now I do this before planting my garlic, just to make sure I'm not planting any infected stock.

Good info, thanks for posting that. Quite often what we *think* is the reason for doing something is completely off-base. The old story about the grandaughter that always cut the roast because mom and gram did it that way. Gram didn't have a pan big enough!!!

I always thought soaking first had to do with germination. Thanks for another angle and it makes perfect sense!

I never even thought to soak the cloves. I just watered them after I planted them. Most of them are up already.

What does garlic fungus look like? I Googled it, but could not find a reference.

My garlic and onions are coming up as we speak. We had a cold snap, then rain, and now a warm snap! Bizzare, but I think the garlic likes the weather?!? Oh well, just happy to see something growing after the drought. Even my pasture is green now.

This morning I have garlic sprouting! YAY! Eleven days from setting the cloves.

Very cool! =D

Mine is sprouting too, but took a bit longer than yours honeybee. And one variety is coming in faster than the other.

Mary, I looked up the date I set out cloves last year and it was November 11th - they didn't sprout until January 3rd 2011!

Weather or different starters do you think?

Okay, I planted mine November 9th. I was told they're a long season crop (takes a long time to get ripe?), but here it is 9 days later, and 3 of the 17 cloves I put out are already sprouting.....what do I do? Do I cover them with mulch now, or what? How long before it's ripe?

I'm so excited!!!!

Just wait for summer! ;-) They are a cool season crop so I would not worry too much about mulching, although it certainly can't hurt anything.

SoFla ~ don't worry. Let them grow and don't mulch or cover. They will be fine as an overwinter crop. Even hard freezes will not harm them. In the spring or early summer, when the tops fold over, you can harvest the bulbs. In this area, mine are ready to harvest in May or June.

This message was edited Nov 18, 2011 6:33 PM

thanks, podster.

have a nice weekend.

MaryMcP -

That makes sense. My second bed is finally starting to pop, both planted the same day, one is way ahead of the other. Different varieties.

My garlic came up this week!! I counted 45 sprouts, but more coming up!

Now we are going to need lot of recipes to utilize all the garlic we are planting.

Problem? What problem? I don't put garlic in oatmeal but that's about it. ;-)))

Have you seen this really cool garlic smasher? It's been out of stock at the mfg for months but I finally found it at another site and it arrived yesterday. A truly awesome tool.

http://www.uncommongoods.com/product/garlic-rocker

Mary - what a neat gadget!

I Googled "garlic rocker" and found that Amazon (and a few other places) carry this as well.

you can freeze your individual garlic cloves and then defrost when you need them.