I found out that all 6 varieties of my garlic happen to be soft neck and I am interested in getting some hard necks just to see how they grow. Is anyone interested in a garlic trade?

I enjoy growing garlic because it is so simple to grow, plus it is one of the few crops grown over winter here. Simply digging a hole, and dropping in a clove will produce a bulb that can be harvested the following summer without any intervention as garlic seems to sprout before the weeds, and already reach a size that can be harvested by mid June. As long as they are spaced far enough and get full sun, they usually get pretty big.

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Hi Steve.

We planted hard neck garlic in the fall. It seems to be doing fine. Contact me around harvest time.

jp

I already have plenty of hardneck species collected now so I have around o dozen species with 2000-2500 cloves in the ground in many garlic beds. I'm hoping they each look distinct so I don't ever end up mixing them up.

What species do you have of hardneck garlic?

I'm still interested if it is anything unique.

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Do you plan on selling the garlic locally after harvest? Unless it's your main food source, 2000 heads is a LOT of garlic to eat.

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Alan.
My blog: It's not work, it's gardening!

I do use garlic a lot, but probably not nearly as much as 2000 full sized garlic bulbs in a year. I haven't decided on what to do with the extras yet. Since many people would like home grown garlic, I could put them up on craigslist, or eBay or give them away to people if I can't find space to plant them.

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I was thinking about growing garlic... looks like I found a good source.

Where would one acquire 2500 cloves of garlic?

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It's very simple. Over half of them are from the years before, and even though I started with around 50 cloves, they multiply exponentially especially if you let the scapes grow which yield tons of bulbils. Bulbils will take 2-3 years to reach full sized bulbs, but it's an easy way to multiply them when you don't have much to start with, and want a large stock of garlic fast. Garlic is also disease and pest resistant so they really don't require much work to grow.

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I have grown over 100 different types of garlic, mostly hardnecks. I was called "The Garlic Man," by the Eugene and Cottage Grove newspapers. I grew several hundred pounds a year, but it became overwhelming. I sold a lot at wine and garlic festivals and on CL. I developed a large following and sold most of what I grew direct for $6 a pound. I got most of my seed garlic from a mom and pop operation in Cottage Grove that used to supply a lot of seed garlic to PNW nurseries. They have stopped growing it now that their kids are through college. I also grew about 8 differnt types of shallots, which are very popular in the Portland area. I sold out of shallots every year pretty fast. I kept about 20% of my harvest for planting the next year's crop and the culls for eating. I eat a lot of garlic. True garlics do not flower nor do they produce seeds. They produce bubils and cloves. If you plant a bubil, you will get what is called a rounder the following year. Plant the rounder and you will get bulbs with cloves the following year. Pnat a clove of garlic, and you will get a bulb with cloves the following year. For that reason, bubils are rarely planted. The difference between hardneck and softneck garlics are that hardnecks put up a scape (also called a rocumbole, or curly top) tha has a false flower on it. This is where the bulbils are produced.

The best time to plant garlic and shallots here in PNW is in October, right when the rains start. I usually harvested from late May through mid July, depending on the type, anual variation in weather, and when they matured. You must rotate your garlic beds though, or you are likely to wind up with nematodes. Contrary to what some have said, garlic is suseptible to a lot of diseases and pests. Once you get certain ones in your soil, any following garlic, shallot or onion crops will fail. Also in the case of nematides, strawberries, daffodills and several other types of plants will also fail. Once nematoides are in the soil you cannot grow anything suseptible to them for about 5 years. For that reason most people here rotate their garlic planting area every year in a at least a three year rotation. Worse than nematodes are white rots. White rot is responsible for many areas in California to not grow garlic any more. The Salinas Valley, Santa Clara Valley, and San Juaquin Valley all have large areas that no longer can grow garlic due to white rot. Once you get white rot in the soil, you can never grow any alliums there again. For that reason about 80% of the seed garlic grown in California is grown in Oregon. Every October and November, a huge number of trucks head south to California from Oregon loaded down with garlic bulbs that will be used as seed for the following year's crop of California garlic. Of these, 90% are softnecks, and almost all of it is either California Early or Califonia Late garlic. Those types account for about 90% of the domestic garlic that is grown in California and sold in US stores.

Of the colder climate hardneck types, my best ones were (off the top of my head): Siberian, Belarus, Spanish Roja, Italian Easy Peel, Oregon Blue (supposedly a softneck, but most years it threw up scapes like a hardneck for me and I believe this is the same as Lorz Italian, which were identical when grown at the same time), Polish hardneck, Bogatyr, Maskij, Chesnok red, Purple Stripe, Premium Northern White, Carpathian, and Asian Tempest. Of the softneck types, Inchellium red was by far the best, but California Early always did well for me. If I were to grow only the best of the best types, I would plant Inchellium red, Asian Tempest, Premium Northern White, Chesnok red, Italian Easy Peel, and Spanish roja. These all procuce consistantly over the years, they have large heads, they have large cloves, they have great flavor, and most are easy to peel. Chesnok red and Italian Easy peel are probably the two most common types grown by small farmers around here. Of all the garlic sources out there, Filaree farms has by far the largest selection. I would avoid Terratorial Seed Co. as a garlic source, as I got nematode infested garlic from them one year that ruined a whole area for planting garlic.

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Great info Shmu!

Scary about the nematodes and [url="http://apps.rhs.org.uk/advicesearch/Profile.aspx?pid=226"]white rot[/url]. Is there a way to know if the cloves have nematodes before planting, or something you can do to treat them before planting?

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Alan.
My blog: It's not work, it's gardening!

Garlic is currently one of the bright spots in my gardens. Here are some of the observations I've made after growing garlic for a few years.

1. The ones planted in flooded areas tend to rot away, and are most likely the ones that don't emerge the following spring.

2. Planting bulbils/seeds in summer as opposed to waiting until fall seems to allow them to have a mini-growing season, and allows them to grow even larger the following spring.

3. The window for growing garlic seems to be mid September through early December, and early October seems to be the ideal time for the best results in my area.

4. Giving garlic more space can result in larger bulbs, but the fertility of the soil as well as the size of the cloves to start out with are also important. Sufficient water and full sun are also important.

5. Garlic can grow pretty well almost anywhere, even if there is plenty of competition from grass and weeds as long as it gets sunlight.

Here's my latest update on the garlic.
http://stevesbamboogarden.blogspot.com/ ... .html#more

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Very had to tell from the bulbs, but avoid any partly rotted cloves, yellow skinned or soft ones, or ones with red or brown specks in them (in the meats). Generally any garlic plots infected with nematodes will have many of the plants wilted from the infestation. They are best burned, and the area that they were grown in not planted with aliums or any other nematode host plants for 4 years (or more). Most people here that grow a lot of garlic burn all their tops and leaf matter after harvesting and rotate their garlic planting fields. Cornell University has a good post with the common garlic diseases and photos of what they look like and what to look for: http://plantclinic.cornell.edu/factshee ... seases.pdf

Some people have had good results dipping their garlic before planting but I never did that. Usually they use really hot water (180-200 deg F.) to dip the cloves in just before planting. The hot water can cook the cloves if they are left in there too long though. It is hard to say how long they need to soak to kill any nematodes and rot and not kill the cloves.

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My experience growing garlic in California and the PNW is quite different. We have a much milder winter here than in upper NY. It also rains more here in the PNW. Here if cloves are planted in October or early November they will send up shoots by mid to late December. Some types like Asian Tempest put up shoots within 2 weeks of planting. I have planted them as late as Thansgiving some years, but generally they are best if planted in October (when 99% of comercial seed garlics are planted here). Here we get rains and snows in winter, and they are impervious to both, but not flooding. For that reason I grew them in raised beds or mounds about 6 inches high (generally in falt beds 4 feet wide by however long). All the types I grew were impervious to temps down to about 10 degrees F. Planting them earlier than October here has a diminishing effect on size, qaulity and uniformity. I have tried planting them pretty much all year round. Spring planted garlic here ripens in the late summer, and the bulbs were really small. Summer planted garlics grew too much in summer and were prone to top kill in winter, and they did not set as well the following year. Winter planted garlic did about the same as spring planted, but more cloves did not come up.

The idea is that you plant the garlic so that they grow some and then go dormant when winter comes. Garlic is a winter crop by evolution. If you put garlic cloves in the refrigerator, they will start to sprout. That is becasue they think that winter is coming on. That is how/when they naturally want to sprout and hence, that is the time to plant them. As for growing garlic in weedy areas, I would beg to differ greatly on that. Garlic is very weed sensitive, and they must be weeded or they will suffer in size and quality. Weeding garlic is a tiring task. On the scale that I grew garlic it was overwhelming my time. For that reason I put down lots of straw (several inches or more) after the garlic had started to grow again in the late winter and before the weeds emerged in the spring. That worked as a natural weed killer. Do not use hay, as you will just be planting hay and weed seeds that are almost always in hay. I also used wood chips, and other amendments as weed covers to keep the weeds down. Also I have found that poor unworked soils will result in poor garlic. I planted many test plots in different conditions on several hundreds of acres. The old berry beds, old worked soil areas and the like did better than the pastures and never planted grass fields. Sun is critical. Here we rarely have to water as the rains usually last through early July. But if it does not rain for a week in hot weather I will water. Photos to follow...

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Here are some photos of the last year I grew garlic in a small plot at my brother's place in north Oregon:
(sorry they are in reverse order of growing season)

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The last 2 photos of my last year growing garlic in '09:

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