Garlic growers, hows this years crop?

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Bumfuque Indiana
Mines doing great, lot of rain, and they are bulbgantious.

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I guess call me dumb, cause I didn't know garlic grew like onions.

I haven't even planted my garden yet, I usually wait till around the 1st lawn mow.
 
If I was still growing it, they would be throwing up scapes and I would be about a month from harvesting it. This winter was really warm here, so my hardneck types would not be so great this year. I used to grow over 50 types myself. No longer.

Those look like softnecks, and a few weeks from pulling up.
 
They're hardnecks, we already cut the scapes. Those scapes sure are delicious cooked on an open bar-b-que pit, we also freeze the scapes and use them in stir fries.....mmm. They will be harvested sometime in the end of July.

Yah, the one thing I miss about growing garlic is the scapes. I make a mean pesto with them.
 
Here's what last years crop looked like.
We had close to 500 bulbs.
I don't know exactly what species they are, just that they were once a purple stripe that was modified in the 1940's. We got them from a garlic farm in Indiana.
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Hmmm, no such thing as a modified garlic type. Garlic does not bloom or have real flowers, so they cannot be crossed or hybridized. They stay true to form except for extremely rare mutations. You may know this but if you let the scapes mature they will form bulbils. Plant a bulbil and it will grow into a rounder the following year (bulb without cloves). Plant the rounder then next year and it will grow a head with cloves. You bypass that by planting cloves and they form a head with cloves in one year. They stay true to form as a clone though.

My guess off hand would be that you have Premium Northern White. If the cloves peel really easy it could also be Italian Easy Peel (my overall favorite). What color are the cloves and how many are there per head? Also do the scapes coil (rocambole) or just droop over?
 
Hmmm, no such thing as a modified garlic type. Garlic does not bloom or have real flowers, so they cannot be crossed or hybridized. They stay true to form except for extremely rare mutations. You may know this but if you let the scapes mature they will form bulbils. Plant a bulbil and it will grow into a rounder the following year (bulb without cloves). Plant the rounder then next year and it will grow a head with cloves. You bypass that by planting cloves and they form a head with cloves in one year. They stay true to form as a clone though.

My guess off hand would be that you have Premium Northern White. If the cloves peel really easy it could also be Italian Easy Peel (my overall favorite). What color are the cloves and how many are there per head? Also do the scapes coil (rocambole) or just droop over?

You are right, I do not know that they were modified, I was told that by the farm that sold it to us, we were told these were a cross between German red and Uzbekistan.
We have been growing these for over 16 years now, they are definitely a purple stripe. We have grown out the seed pods and planted them also. The scapes look like a pigs pecker, rocambole, I guess...some of the scapes had 10 - 12 coils in them. The garlic has a red purple stripe in 90 percent of the bulbs and there is anywhere from 6 - 14 cloves to each bulb. There are hard as hell to peel. Peel rind also turns dark brown to red when cured. As you can see by the pictures, they aren't small, most of our bulbs are larger than what Sam's club sells as elephant garlic. I actually wish I could send them someplace to find out what the actual species is.
 
Wow guys. I just got a small education on garlic. I have a sad story about garlic. Old WW2 vet that I was friends with was going to school me on garlic and ended up dieing before we could get hooked up. Anyway found a coworker that has garlic on his property. I've been growing it for two years now. Still learning.
Windthrown, I always admired you for liking 1123 series saws and now have another reason to respect you.
 
I planted a few varieties to see which ones best suit me.
I like my garlic strong, large, and long storage.
They all are doing great so I will be able to make a decision this July.
Where I'm at it seems like April was the magic month for heavy growth.
 
Something we have found over the years growing is that "our" garlic prefers a hard compact soil. We have experimented several different soils, loamy, sandy, mulched compost, none of those soils created as big as bulbs as just hard compact clay based soils. It seems to me the harder the bulbs have to press against the dirt while growing, the bigger the bulbs will grow. This is not scientific data, but that is what works best for us, I can't figure that out.
 
I planted a few varieties to see which ones best suit me.
I like my garlic strong, large, and long storage.
They all are doing great so I will be able to make a decision this July.
Where I'm at it seems like April was the magic month for heavy growth.


I believe the hard neck varieties have a longer shelf life after they are cured, softnecks seem to me to have a stronger flavor.
Our roasted garlic can't be beat it is awesome, one of the greatest pleasures from our garden.
 
We grow both German red and Italian late. In our soil the Italian late is some hot stuff. We usually plant in the fall but I also planted in the spring with good results. If you have a food dehydrator (Excalibur) you can dry garlic and grind it for garlic powder. You want to do this outside. A full clip in the dehydrator indoors will peel the paint off the walls (ask me how I know this) but you will never have a vampire problem.
 
Here are some of my HNs. Some have huge stock. The soil is 80% mulch/compost and 10% dirt.
 

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I've tried growing garlic several times, and never got much of anything. My plants never got very large, turned brown, and died, leaving me disappointed. I did get some garlic, but a much more effective use of my time and money would have been just buying some at the supermarket. I'm doing something wrong, planting at the wrong time, soil not right, something. With nearly everything else I'm getting great results. I'm going to try again, but not before doing a lot more research.
 
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