Garlic Divas and Gurus

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Comment by Lucy Goodman on November 4, 2011 at 6:31am

Time to plant the 2012 garlic crop. I plan on getting in around 3000 cloves in the next 2 weeks or so.

Comment by Lucy Goodman on September 18, 2011 at 6:48am

You an indeed get garlic from the bubels (seeds). You let the scape go to flower and let the flower develop completely (do not cut off the plant-oh and the garlic will be tiny as all the energy went into growing flowers/seed) and you will have the bubels. Than you plant those, let them grow for a year, dig the garlic up (it will be small and usually only 2 or 3 cloves), separate out the cloves, plant them in the fall and repeat this another season or two and you will, in 3 to 5 years, get regular sized garlic 9and possibly and new variety if you let several different type flower at the same time and cross pollinate)

Comment by Ginny Hopper on September 17, 2011 at 4:35pm

Two years ago in the spring I was given a few garlic plants and replanted them in my garden beds. I pulled the scapes off when they made an appearance and I let them over winter last winter, thus enlarging my crop for this year. I was told and read that you can produce new plants from the seed that forms from the scapes. Has anyone here done this and if so, how do you go about it? When do you harvest the scape, how is the scape treated once removed, how are the seeds removed and stored until planting time, when do you plant the seed, how deep and how long until it forms an edible bulb?  Thanks!

Comment by Country Girl on July 8, 2011 at 11:39am

The crops are in!!! My porch is garlicious! ;o) No vampires here...We pulled last weekend and had a glorious time of it in good dry hot weather. Unfortunately due to our distance from home to where our garlic is, there was another burst of scapes that came after the initial scape cutting fest. Our sizes on those garlic that went to flower were definitely smaller than usual! So, that was disappointing, but hopefully we will be able to have a more sane year next season and have our garlic closer to home, once we find some local land to relocate to! Fresh garlic pasta dinners this week...topped with some fresh basil...waiting on the wee little grape tomatoes to riped up and all will be well in the world ;o)

Comment by Country Girl on July 8, 2011 at 11:34am

While I have never planted garlic in the spring, due to where we have lived, people do also plant in Spring and harvest in fall...I believe the result is just smaller sizes, as it has not gone through the dormancy period, and hasn't had the cold shock bulbs like to have...seems to me you can pull your garlic after it's done its thing this summer and let it dry and then prepare your beds for planting in the fall and put it to bed for the winter and plan on harvesting around june/july. Keep your garlic weeded well to help bulk up the size, so it's not competing with the weeds for nutrients from the soil.

Comment by Lucy Goodman on July 1, 2011 at 11:21am

Christene, harvest you garlic in the fall-it will be smaller than over wintered garlic but usable

Comment by Christene on June 23, 2011 at 7:06am

Garlic trouble - very new to this I planted my garlic this spring - I have been haring you should do this in the fall.  So what do I do now.

Comment by Country Girl on June 22, 2011 at 9:38am

Rain came...no harvest this past weekend....Boooo....But, that's okay. We needed the rain. Will try again this weekend...crossing our fingers, legs, eyes, etc., ;o)

Comment by Country Girl on June 15, 2011 at 11:53am

Hola peeps!

 

Apologies for my lack of tending to the virtual patch here!! Springtime illnesses and computer crashing have had us behind the ball lately. But we can't let a few weeds get in our way!

 

Here in southwest Virginia, the scapes have all been snapped off and we are getting ready to pull most of our 26 varieties this coming weekend! Time to roll up the sleeves and get ready to play in the dirt.

 

For any of you that aren't familiar with the scapes-those are the pig tail curly- ques that shoot out of the center of the garlic plant. Snapping those off sends more growth energy back to the size of the bulb, rather than sending energy into flower production, which is where the scape is headed. It's always nice to let a few scapes go into flower, just because they are quite a pretty sight. The flower heads are like magical fairy wands with a mass of stars in a giant ball at the end of the *stick*. Quite fun for the kiddies to cast spells, when they have completely dried. They last forever in an arrangement and are not too overpowering in their scent.

 

About an hour away from us, I understand that there is some demand from asian restaurants, who want the scapes to cook with in their cuisine. Lending a slight garlicly taste that's very mild, the bright green of the scape performs great in a stirfry. I was informed the restaurants were offering 2.60 a pound for the scapes, and would take them by the plastic garbage bag full -they weren't picky! Since scape season is quite short, you can harvest them yourself and chop them up and store them in the freezer for future use. Or, if scapes aren't for you, they can go in the compost heap just as easily.

 

Hopefully we will have a nice dry weekend and pulling wil go smoothly. Our chosen method of drying the garlic is by hanging it in bundles in a large shed, we are about to outgrow! Previous years we used wooden drying racks my husband built himself, which worked great for the smaller sized crops we had in the past. At the qualtity we have now, there's not enough room for racking. A giant ball of food freindly twine later, we'll be looking up at a garlic canopy, surely to send us home in search of a delicious garlic fest dinner that evening, after smelling it all day long!

 

On a funny side note: In reference to clothing and garlic *juice* saturation in fabric: I save all garlic harvest clothing to wash together in the least offensive scented laundry detergent I can find, for the simple reason that my usual unscented detergent doesn't always get the garlic scent out of the clothing. Tis not very pleasant to pull out "clean clothes" that ALL have that garlic scent on them. Therefore, they get their own laundering and on the heavy duty cycle with something to help get the scent out. As much as I LOVE the smell of garlic, I can honestly say I don't want my wardrobe and my body to smell like it all day!

 

And finally, last but not least, welcome to all the new garlic folks who have stopped by while I was *out to lunch* ;o) Hope this finds everyone enjoying Springtime and the forthcoming harvest of some garlicious garlic to kick off the beginning of another bountiful season of Mother Earth's blessings!

 

Waving wildly from the garlic patch!

Cheers!!

Country Girl...(for now, as my husband informs me I must change my name to Garlic Diva!) lol

Comment by Angie Thomas on April 15, 2011 at 10:26am

My garlic is starting to poke out of the snow!!!

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