Planting the 2012 garlic

It was the first week of November before we could get onto the garden to prepare for the garlic planting. I hate planting in November. I'd much rather have the beds ready by mid September and the garlic in the ground no later than mid October. November planted garlic tends to frost heave as it isn't in the ground long enough to grow roots to hold it in place as our soil freezes and thaws many times in most years. We didn't have much choice with planting time this year. It started raining in late August and has kept it up often enough since to keep me and the tiller out of the gardens!

The bed DW is weeding had potatoes left in it from the summer's failed harvest. 100F days through July and no water other than rain fall (of which there was not a drop) made the 90 pounds of taters we scattered across two gardens a waste of money. But that's how it goes if one relies on Nature's generosity, or there is no source of water and mulch for the garden.


The local newspaper readers often ask me if I do anything in the garden?


Sure I do, though as little of it as possible.


Popped and labeled cloves of 20 cultivars are being planted this year, some of them are in the plastic bag. the clip board is the garden map Wanda draws up as she planted. I mark each section of cultivars with metal stakes so they are easier to sort out come July harvest. We learned early on to count each clove so we don't mix cultivars should the marker stakes get moved. Epsoma's "Bulb-tone is the only fertilize we use. I pour a line of it on top of the raised row and DW pushes the cloves down through it. I rake the soil over the holes left behind by her planting.


DW adds a just planted cultivar to the map. Name and number of cloves in whatever row.


Bed No. 2: planted, raked and ready for rain or snow. 683 cloves made up from 10 cultivars.


Planting the last row of Bed No. 1. I don't know how she managed to stay bent over like that to plant 779 cloves! My back ached just watching her. She did complain of her knees bothering her. We're coming to this gardening after decades of standing in a factory all day. We're just not used to such work.



The garlic maps. I'll lose them if I don't put them several places on the Net!

1360 cloves in the ground and I don't care if I never see another for at least a day. I've a bowl full of culled cloves to peel and slice for the dehydrator. At least they are already popped free from the bulbs so my thumbs get a break!

The scapes are forming! The scapes are forming!

DW takes a break from weeding the spotty tater bed. I had to drag her away from the garlic as once she gets to pulling weeds she doesn't want to stop until she's got them all, or the sun has fallen low enough behind the mountain so's she can't see the weeds!

Tuscon. The picture backs up my notes: sloppy plant. They do look sloppy with their paler shade of green, the bent, haphazard leaves and the loose curl of the scape. Hopefully their flavor is better than their appearance.

These are Italian Red, possibly some of the nicest looking garlic in the bed. The scapes are forming tight curls and according to my notes the base of the stalks average 5/8" diameter.

Chesnok Red. It's hard to believe these were among the last to pop out of the soil this spring and then they were curled like a pig tails and hugged the ground! I believe this cultivar is supposed to rival Spanish Roja for flavor.

We're hoping to lift the bulbs in the first or second week of July. This is the first year I've bothered to keep notes on my garlic beds so I don't know how delayed the harvest might be due to the long, cool, wet spring. Just on a guess, I'd say this year's crop looks as good and on time as last year's.

I'm so not into supermarket garlic right now. Evidently my friends and family aren't either as a brother in MS is telling me I have to sell some garlic to him while friends and family in FL, SC, PA and even Bulgaria are clamoring for their share. One of the Bulgarians suggested a trade, she'd send me mushroom bouillon cubes for garlic! I still can't get over Bulgarians wanting my garlic. They tell me they still grow good garlic in Bulgaria, but it is shipped outside the country to markets willing to pay more for it. The non-gardening locals are left with nasty stuff brought in from China, just like the crap we have in some of the supermarkets here!

We've already begun next year's garlic beds (they have potatoes in them) and our garlic guru has convinced me to keep most of the cultivars we have now as seed for next year while we buy our eating garlic from her. She also thinks we should throw in our seed garlic orders with hers as she gets a huge discount when buying in bulk. I'm all for that. Some of the cultivars we have growing cost us in the neighborhood of $30 a pound when you add in the cost of shipping!

I still haven't figured out where I'm going to hang the harvest to dry and cure! I don't know what we'll do when we finally get started gardening for market on the acre and a half our dairy farmer friends have given us. I walked over that ground recently and visions of a quarter acre of garlic were in my head. Where would I hang all that to dry?!

Accidental scallions

First garlic of the year, sort of. These are garlic scallions. They weren't meant to be. They were supposed to develop big bulbs, but they turned out stunted compared to the rest of the planting so we pull them as we weed.

I've not eaten garlic in this stage, if it turns out to be as tasty as I've heard I might plant a bed of culls this fall so we'll have plenty of scallions come next April/May.

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!

Frozen, but not forgotten!

I found these in the freezer while I was hunting something else. I think they are at least two years old. They were given to me by DW's aunt who got them from some organic grower across the state line from us. I tossed them in the freezer for desperate times as they had little flavor compared to the small harvest I'd lifted from our own little garlic bed that season.

Desperate times are defined by a lack of good garlic! Like, when all of ours has been eaten or planted, and all our garlic guru's stock has been sold or sown. These are desperate times in deed!

As bland as this garlic was years ago I find the brightly colored wrappers at least interesting. I've read that certain varieties of garlic, like certain wines, take time to fully develop their flavor. These seem to be such, though two years frozen may have helped them along in that regard.

Whatever they are, they are better than anything I can get from a supermarket!

UPDATE! 12/09/10

Duh, I put the culled bulbs from this summer's harvest in the freezer! (Senility steadily eats away!) The good news? Even the frozen, homegrown culls are better than supermarket fresh!

First serious attempt at garlic

Hanging to dry

A few bulbs for sale

This summer's crop of garlic has inspired me to get a little crazy with next year's garden. I've already placed orders for more than 10 pounds of seed garlic. I'm not going to be able to expand my current garden much more, so I'll be tilling under the wide sod walkways between the beds. Nor will I be able to use the goat litter I'd planned on. Instead I'll have to haul manure from a friend's dairy farm. I'll be gathering straw from there to use as a mulch so making an extra trip or two is no big deal.

I made a couple ciabatta loaves (sorry I didn't take pictures, we ate the bread too quickly) that would have been great with garlic butter, but were pretty darn good with fried ham and mayo. Now that I've got that particular recipe down pat I'll be building the bread more often and slicing it so I can slather it with garlic butter, sprinkle it with grated parmesan reggiano and slide it under a broiler to toast... A cold glass of homemade mead. Ahhh!