Does anyone grow garlic?

A couple of months ago I had some garlic cloves start to sprout in the kitchen. These are the ordinary kind you buy at the grocery for cooking. So as an experiment I plopped them into a flower pot, to see if they would grow. Several books and gardening sources seemed to indicate that they would do fine.

Well, they sprouted quite nicely and each clove sent up a little green shoot maybe 3" long. No real leaves or other foliage, just the one shoot each. They never got any bigger, and one by one they've shriveled and died off at the soil line. The cloves each have a strong root system under the soil, though.

So do I dig these up and start over? Bring the pot indoors to protect it from heat and hope they rejuvenate?

Thanks!

Hello,

I can tell you that garlic does come up in one long shoot. They normally are planted with Fall bulbs, but can be planted in the ground in the spring too. I planted mine a couple months ago but they aren't ready to eat until the end of the summer. That's about as much as I know on them. Good luck!!

Megan

I grow a lot of creole garlic--go to my page and click on plants--there's about 6 varieties I grow there. Mine will be harvested pretty soon now.
Debbie

Mine send up one shoot , There are 4 or 5 that I let go to seed pod for reseeding

From what I've been reading, it just seems like they got too hot. I planted them at the wrong time.

So will these cloves recover, or should I toss them and start over in the autumn?

Oct-Nov here.
Debbie

my brother grows a good size area of several varietys, plants sometime from Oct-Dec and harvest in June when it starts dieing down.

Kate, why not plant them in the ground? I've grown garlic for years... sometimes starting in summer with store-bought bulbs. Better results spring or fall though all have produced.

Darius, I don't have a sunny spot in the back yard at all, so I planted everything in pots and moved them around to catch the sun. Another reason is my lovable Lab/Newfie mix, Millie the Adorable Hairy Beast, who digs up anything she can get her paws in. She'd be better than a rototiller if I could get her to dig where I needed dug. :D

It sounds as if your garlic just went through its life cycle in a big hurry. Normally garlic behaves just about like tulips. Normally we plant tulips in the fall and they bloom and die back afterwards. If they had a good season they will have multiplied. Garlic does the same, if everything is fine.

Here in Northern New Mexico, I plant my garlic in the fall. The stuff from the store is fine, but you can get great garlic from a number of places -- my most recent favorite is Seed Savers Exchange:
http://www.seedsavers.org/Home.asp

But there are lots of other good places to buy garlic starts.

At this point in time (late May) my garlic has come up and is flourishing. It looks kind of like a small gladiola plant -- at least to me. It is just starting to put out a sort of wierd flower/fruit called a scape which can be used to start other plants or cooked with your food. I have been told to pinch off the scapes to grow bigger garlic.

After pinching off the scape, the plant will start to turn brown. I pull up the plant when about half the leaves have turned brown. Then I leave the plants out in the sun to dry for a couple of weeks. Then I put them in a dry, cool dark place until I need them. I save the biggest ones to plant new garlic.

Here in New Mexico, that works great. So you should dig up your flower pots and see if you have bulbs in them. You might. You will get bigger ones if you plant your garlic in the fall.

More on growing garlic.

I am not sure how garlic growing works in the South. I have a farm in Southern Mississippi. I only get there once or twice a year but have started a little herb garden near the house. I have mint and oregano and a few other things. A good friend planted garlic all around the edge of the herb bed for me. It grows every year and dies back but it leaves one large bulb, that isn't divided into cloves. I have no idea why, but the garlic is there year round and can do what it needs to do whenever it wants. Knowing what I do about onions, I am wondering if we don't need short-day garlic. Or perhaps it is a lack of sun. My herb bed is under a catalpa tree and only gets partial sun.

My friend has the same problem with her garlic, but it tastes like other garlic and works fine in recipes.

If anyone knows why this happens, I would be pleased to have an answer.

My garlic, started in late Oct-Nov is ready to harvest very soon.

Here's some excellent varieties for the south:

http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/130446/index.html

http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/130447/index.html

http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/130581/index.html

http://davesgarden.com/pf/go/130586/index.html

In the south, I recommend these folks, family owned:
http://www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com/

Debbie



This message was edited May 27, 2006 9:56 PM

I tried garlic this year. The store bought kind which sprouted in the refrig.
Put the sprouts in the ground, in full sun. right next to my okra and roma tomatos.
they grew to about 6" leaves and then turned brown and I let them wither away thinking that they did not grow bulbs. Of the ones I did pull the bulbs that had sprouted in the refrig. were mushy and that is all, no extra bulbs attached to them or growth. I did leave some in the ground and let those leaves die off thinking they would give substance and become compost for the okra and tomatos.

I really would like some garlic, I ccook alot with it. I will try again in the fall.
Thanks for the thread and wish me luck.

calvin

This message was edited May 29, 2006 12:26 AM

Calvin--I can through you some good cloves soon, your garden's fairly small--by the way your seeds are in the mail.
Debbie

I have good luck with garlic. It may be because of my location, not far from Gilroy the "Garlic Capitol of the World". I plant individual cloves as close to Oct. 1 as I can, and by now I have a good crop coming on.

There are different kinds of garlic. The kind you usually find in stores is soft-necked garlic. It keeps and ships better than hard-neck garlic. With soft-neck garlic I leave it in the ground until it starts to die back (usually late June or early July here.) I don't let it go to flower. First I knock the tops over and leave it for a week or two. Then I pull it and leave it to dry in a shady place for a few weeks. This is how you get the individual cloves to "dry" in their separate compartments. You can use is when it is first pulled, but you will not get the individual cloves to separate like you do in the ones from the store. Used this way, it is called "fresh garlic" around here, and the only place you can find it, if you don't grow it, is farmer's markets. It is a little milder, but has a nice fresh garlic flavor.

The hard-neck garlic can be treated the same way, but it will develop a flower stalk in the middle that sends up a very pretty curlicule stalk with a round head of tiny flowers. These flowers eventually form tiny garlic "cloves" that you can plant and make into next years garlic. But you can go the fast route and just use the actual garlic cloves for the next year. The flower stalks do not impair the garlic heads, so you can have the best of both worlds with hard-neck garlic. But it does not keep as well.

I will try to remember to post a picture of the pretty flower stalks when my hard-neck flowers this year. Just experiment, keep steady moisture and try planting cloves during your coolest season. (I doubt this means deep freeze winter.) You will come up with your best garlic-growing scenario. And it's worth it! I grew up in garlic-deprived Iowa where onion- or garlic-breath was a social crime. Then I came to California was introduced to garlic by the grandmother of an Italian friend. I have never looked back. If someone notices my garlic-breath and takes offense, the fault is theirs for not having eaten any.

I could not possibly grow enough garlic to supply my needs on my city lot -- without giving up all the other flowers and veggies I like to grow. But I always plant a row of garlic because it is so delicious just out of the ground and because it is interesting to grow. I find that here in Northern New Mexico, it is a little tricky to get good sized bulbs. I find that the more I improve my soil, the bigger the garlics get. And the soil grew good tomatoes and onions etc. just fine. But after adding compost for 3 or 4 years the size of my garlic bulbs has really improved.

Debbie, thanks for the links to Gourmet Garlic Gardens. The advice, the pictures, and especially the available varieties are very helpful. I plan to order some to plant in Mississippi this fall.

Also, thanks for letting me know when to plant in the South. Sometimes planting times in the south are really different from other places, but it sounds like, in the case of garlic, the times are close to the same.

Soft neck varieties only for the South. I grow an incredible amount of garlic in very small spaces...its quite possible.
Debbie

wow! Thank you all for the answers, especially yours, Betty (pajaritomt).

I finally decided to dig up a couple of the cloves and see what happened. They had well-developed root systems, as you can see, but neither of the cloves had divided and didn't actually seem to be much diminished from their size and shape when I planted them.

So yes, these will be discarded but I will try again in the autumn. Remember it was just an experiment brought about by "Hey! These things are sprouting on me and I can't cook with them!" (Yes, I know I still can, but I don't much like the really strong flavor of sprouted garlic.)

I checked on mine today--they aren't ready yet...its often around the solstice. It is definitely a day-length related thing.

We got a hot dry spell and the tops started to brown a little early this year. We plant ours in October / November (Zone 7A) and harvest the 1st or 2nd week in June.

Here it is curing in the baby chicken yard.

Nice garden joze--I keep a close eye on mine...but so far, not ready yet.

I have garlic that was planted two years ago and never harvested. Will it be any good if we try and harvest it this year? I'm wondering when would be a good time to try since I can't recall when or even how it was planted!

Karen

Just dig it up after the tops brown about halfway

I went out to dig up one of my creole garlics--just to see how it was coming along--they still taste good in pasta salads....got the peculiar feeling I was being watched. Looked over my shoulder and here is this guy staring at me...the garlic patch is on the ground maybe 15' or less from him. Needless to say, it was a bit too much reality for me before 9:00 am.

forgot pic--I've been a little rattled after the encounter all day.

The halfway trick doesn't always work as an indicator for me.

I read your post without the picture and I was thinking an actual man was there - got all nervous for you. Opossums I can take, strangers hanging about No.

How was the garlic?

Not ready to harvest here--but immature tastes good for a pasta salad.

I just had my very first encounter with a opossum a couple of weeks ago myself. It was night and I could hardly see him, so I at first thought he was a huge rat! He moved so very slowly and my cat who was out in the yard with us wasn't scared at all and just kept staring at him (which wouldn't be the case if he saw another cat on the fence). I heard that if you startle a possum, it coould play dead from 10 minutes up to 4 hours (some kind of biological reaction). I'm glad we didn't scare him and end up with him in coma in my yard for hours...

tmm

Hi All:

For those who suffered with garlic that didn't develop a full bulb.....

I experienced this condition a year or two ago. I had planted my cloves in a garden that had become shaded (hard to notice in fall when the leaves are all gone - whoops !!) with maybe only 3 hours of midday sunshine per day. Plus it was a dark/wet spring to boot.

I had assumed that the lack of sunshine had something to do with the lack of development.

I moved the garlics back into full sun and they are much much happier now.

Cheers

Steve

This was my first time planting garlic and I started mine in March because the company I purchased from assured me I would still produce garlic. Anyway, I have been dying of curiosity, so today, I dug up the smallest shoot in the bunch and I couldn't believe my eyes!!! It was the size of a whole garlic that I buy in the stores with little roots at the base. I re-planted it right away. The type of garlic is Elephant Ear so maybe the size of what I dug up is actually really small, but I was still impressed with it. Can't wait to try some different types again this Fall.

KatePeterson,
Your cloves haven't grown much but those roots tell me they were alive and self sustaining. Next time when you plant them at the right time, put them in a sunny spot and give them good soil they will probably do much better.

lafko,
I know what you mean. The first time I saw a garlic bulb that I had grown I was really excited. There is something mysterious about them.

glamoury
When I leave garlic in for 2 years, I usually get 1 good sized bulb and a whole bunch of smaller plants/cloves. Probably it is best to pull them all up when the tops are half brown and replant good sized cloves.

dmj,

I think your neighbor is kinda cute, but he would give you a start if you weren't expecting him. I, too, thought you were talking about a human male. Bet he would like some of the stuff in your garden.
Betty

That is too funny paj. I thought the same thing!!!! I didn't look at the picture until now, lol! What a cutie dmj.

Looks like mine are just about ready for harvesting--I'm giving them one more week just to make sure all of them are ready.