Garlic 'a Growing!

All the garlic is up and so are some of the earliest spring weeds. We were starting to worry that we'd lost three cultivars; Morada Gigante, Pyongvang Korean and Chesnok Red. They only poked green out of the ground the last day of February or the first week in March. Every other cultivar has been up since before the end of November! We need to take a hard look at the crop, see if there are any stunted, or dying plants that need removed before whatever is bothering them can spread to the rest of the bed.

A big worry is the garlic nematode that may have reached our garlic bed via a purchase of "culinary" garlic I got from a farm in New York and planted without fully understanding the seriousness of the new invader. From what I've read of the nematode it entered NY from Canada and has been spreading throughout the Northeast USA. As the little buggers take several years to establish a destructive population I'm not sure what I should do with the garlic I harvest this year.

I have a new garden, an acre actually, and the plan was to begin planting it with garlic the second year we work it. I had planned to bring my "saved" garlic to the new garden, but now I think I'd best plan on buying certified garlic and just keep growing what I have now in the old garden. I'll rotate the beds of course and watch for signs of nematodes, possibly I'll even try the hot water treatments, but I'm thinking it's best to keep the new garden free of any garlic grown on the East-coast. Including my own!

http://attra.ncat.org/attra-pub/garlic.html#nematodes

This is the Chesnok Red which supposedly challenges Spanish Roja in flavor tests. Being one of the last to show growth, and having nematodes on my mind, I was freaked to see the leaves curling like pig's tails. Of the 16 cultivars I have in the ground (maybe another 16 cultivars I've seen over the last few years) I've never seen such a curled leaf among them, until now. I drove over to check out my garlic guru's Chesnok Red and found hers to be growing just as mine is. As she bought hers from a different source than I did we figure it must be the cultivar's habit of early growth.

As I can't do anything about a possible nematode invasion now, nor can I make it rain when I need it, or stop when I really need it to stop, I guess I'll deal with what I can manage, the weeds. And figuring out where I can dry/cure the harvest come mid July! And dreaming of sausages made with GOOD garlic! Not the supermarket, nasty, harsh stuff I'm using now!