http://www.anthive.com/flowers/p5030...een_Garlic.jpg


songbird

songbird wrote:

http://www.anthive.com/flowers/p5030...een_Garlic.jpg

Thank you for the inspirational picture on an otherwise gloomy day.
I'm kicking myself for not planting anything for green garlic. Usually in
the fall I follow the advice of a commercial garlic farmer: Throw all the
cloves that were too small to plant at the end of the bed and pull them in
the spring for green garlic. In his case, it's an income source when there
isn't anything else except asparagus He is near a town with a large Asian
community; they'll buy all he has.


--
Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic
Zone 5/4 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

Gary Woods wrote:
songbird wrote:

http://www.anthive.com/flowers/p5030...een_Garlic.jpg

Thank you for the inspirational picture on an otherwise gloomy day.

yeah, we're getting some rains today too. it
is ok as we've been moving cedar trees. nice to not
have to water them.


I'm kicking myself for not planting anything for green garlic. Usually in
the fall I follow the advice of a commercial garlic farmer: Throw all the
cloves that were too small to plant at the end of the bed and pull them in
the spring for green garlic. In his case, it's an income source when there
isn't anything else except asparagus He is near a town with a large Asian
community; they'll buy all he has.

y.w. when i pull it up there's so much
more red color on the outer layers, but they
have too much dirt on them to eat. still fun
to look at.

when i steamed it yesterday it tasted like
pretty much any other green onion. to me
that means i cooked it too long. i like it
much better when i'm out there picking it.
i'll clean the stalk off, chop off the end
and chew on it right there. then it tastes
like both green onion and garlic.

i could see where it is a useful crop for
someone and i wonder why so few have used it.
for me it is so much easier to grow than green
onions. what you saw above is from an area i'm
trying to weed it because otherwise it would
take over. i've been weeding that patch for
years now ever since i threw a bunch of scapes
in there. many many buckets of garlic later.
i'm sure there will be plenty left that i'll
miss too.

for planted garlic this year i'm down to
about 30 heads. the rest of the gardens
have many hundreds to use up, but they are
harder to get at and often not as large as
the selected ones i plant. i'm now getting
much better results having figured out the
spacing, soil, water and mainly planting
the largest cloves (often bigger than my
thumb the past few years).

you can see my garlic patch in the background
of these two other recent pics:

http://www.anthive.com/flowers/p4180...ay_Removal.jpg

http://www.anthive.com/flowers/p4270...ed_Gardens.jpg


and here is some spring color for a gloomy day:

http://www.anthive.com/flowers/p4230001_Spring_Mix.jpg


songbird

On 05/04/2016 07:00 AM, songbird wrote:
http://www.anthive.com/flowers/p5030...een_Garlic.jpg


songbird


That is a thing of beauty!

In article ,
songbird wrote:

i could see where it is a useful crop for
someone and i wonder why so few have used it.
....
for planted garlic this year i'm down to
about 30 heads. the rest of the gardens
have many hundreds to use up, but they are
harder to get at and often not as large as
the selected ones i plant. i'm now getting
much better results having figured out the
spacing, soil, water and mainly planting
the largest cloves (often bigger than my
thumb the past few years).


Well, I don't generally do it because I'm trying to get to the more
usual end-result - more heads/cloves. So it feels like robbing the
cradle, a bit. I guess I could try unbending (I do have a few ferals
about.) That would make a bed I could dig up in spring to put something
else in. I also made the mistake of using chives for a border some years
ago, so I have more "green onion-y" material than I can shake a stick at
- though we mostly grow them for the few weeks of chive flowers,
typically thrown on top of a cracker with cheese.

I have a light feral/scape-clove patch (planted scape cloves, so not
totally feral, but I let it fend for itself) in the woods-edge. It is
hanging on but not a resounding success. I was lured into this by an
escapee from the sorting that put up a lovely plant in the woods by the
porch, but evidently that was a bit of a fluke, as I've had another
woods patch (100 scape bulbs) fade away to nothing. The surviving patch
appears to have been visited by foodie chipmunks (some stolen bulbs) but
is still growing after several years. The last couple of years I have
scaped the garlic and not had new scape bulbils as a result.

The main beds are a few heads shy of 100, which is my nominal planning
point - 50 heads each of two types, though I may now be confused about
which is which since they are not clearly/obviously different. I aim for
24-28 big heads (from the nominal 100) to pull big cloves from for seed,
and have a mass of roasted garlic from the smaller cloves I suppose I
could be planting for green garlic instead...

I think I'm up to 9x9 inch spacing now in my quest to see at what point
more space stops helping - 8x8 was definitely better head size than 6x6,
though a commercial site I visited claimed there were more pounds per
acre (of smaller heads) at 6x6. I'm going after bigger heads, not pounds
per square foot.

Planting the large cloves is mostly working, but does backfire from time
to time - I have some doubles and triples showing up, and the double-
and triple-header heads tend to be smaller, since they are not spaced at
all from their immediate siblings, and pretty much represent starting
with a clove 1/2 or 1/3 the size you thought you were starting with.

Under "whackier crops I'm trying again" I have leek seedlings going. I
don't recall success the last time I tried them, but I've evidently
forgotten enough details to order seed and have at it again.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

T wrote:
songbird wrote:
http://www.anthive.com/flowers/p5030...een_Garlic.jpg

That is a thing of beauty!

yes, it is, still plenty of it out there to dig
up too.


songbird

Ecnerwal wrote:

....re green garlic...

Well, I don't generally do it because I'm trying to get to the more
usual end-result - more heads/cloves. So it feels like robbing the
cradle, a bit. I guess I could try unbending (I do have a few ferals
about.) That would make a bed I could dig up in spring to put something
else in. I also made the mistake of using chives for a border some years
ago, so I have more "green onion-y" material than I can shake a stick at
- though we mostly grow them for the few weeks of chive flowers,
typically thrown on top of a cracker with cheese.

if/when i ever run out of ferals to dig up i'll go back
to planting more (you can space it closer since you'll be
digging it up early) as then i can also plant it deeper
than it usually grows (which gives you more white blanched
stem ).


....
is still growing after several years. The last couple of years I have
scaped the garlic and not had new scape bulbils as a result.

yes, i'm doing that too, otherwise it gets really
crazy.


The main beds are a few heads shy of 100, which is my nominal planning
point - 50 heads each of two types, though I may now be confused about
which is which since they are not clearly/obviously different. I aim for
24-28 big heads (from the nominal 100) to pull big cloves from for seed,
and have a mass of roasted garlic from the smaller cloves I suppose I
could be planting for green garlic instead...

i like it because you can dig it up any time and
for me it grows much easier than the green onions.


I think I'm up to 9x9 inch spacing now in my quest to see at what point
more space stops helping - 8x8 was definitely better head size than 6x6,
though a commercial site I visited claimed there were more pounds per
acre (of smaller heads) at 6x6. I'm going after bigger heads, not pounds
per square foot.

yep. that's about where i'm at. 8-12 inches apart. we
do not have a shortage of space here.


Planting the large cloves is mostly working, but does backfire from time
to time - I have some doubles and triples showing up, and the double-
and triple-header heads tend to be smaller, since they are not spaced at
all from their immediate siblings, and pretty much represent starting
with a clove 1/2 or 1/3 the size you thought you were starting with.

i get some doubles but they are still large enough to
be ok. usually plant in second year rotation so the soil
is very fertile still.


Under "whackier crops I'm trying again" I have leek seedlings going. I
don't recall success the last time I tried them, but I've evidently
forgotten enough details to order seed and have at it again.

Ma won't touch 'em so i don't plant. i have a few
oddballs growing and will be interested to see what
comes of them. should take some pics of them while
they are young.


songbird

On 05/06/2016 10:56 AM, songbird wrote:
T wrote:
songbird wrote:
http://www.anthive.com/flowers/p5030...een_Garlic.jpg

That is a thing of beauty!

yes, it is, still plenty of it out there to dig
up too.


songbird


I accidentally chopped on while weeding. It was very
good eating!

Questions:

how mad does the plant get at you when your
do that?

Does the bulb shrink trying to rebuild the top?

And, how many times can you get away with it?

-T

T wrote:
....
I accidentally chopped on while weeding. It was very
good eating!

Questions:

how mad does the plant get at you when your
do that?

can survive, but obviously there's some effect
on bulb size.


Does the bulb shrink trying to rebuild the top?

no bulb forms until later. right now it's
all leaves and stalk when i dig them up.


And, how many times can you get away with it?

each one is a cost.

i usually am digging up the whole plant (roots
and all) because i'm trying to remove them. the
roots are very well liked by worms after they've
dried out. if you leave some of the bottom attached
to the roots then there might be enough energy to
restart a plant, but i would not count on it getting
big until the following year.

in the end, if you want a lot of garlic, use the
cloves and bulbules and you can have thousands of
plants within a few years.


songbird

On 05/06/2016 09:26 PM, songbird wrote:
T wrote:
...
I accidentally chopped on while weeding. It was very
good eating!

Questions:

how mad does the plant get at you when your
do that?

can survive, but obviously there's some effect
on bulb size.


Does the bulb shrink trying to rebuild the top?

no bulb forms until later. right now it's
all leaves and stalk when i dig them up.


And, how many times can you get away with it?

each one is a cost.

i usually am digging up the whole plant (roots
and all) because i'm trying to remove them. the
roots are very well liked by worms after they've
dried out. if you leave some of the bottom attached
to the roots then there might be enough energy to
restart a plant, but i would not count on it getting
big until the following year.

in the end, if you want a lot of garlic, use the
cloves and bulbules and you can have thousands of
plants within a few years.


songbird



Thank you!

What is a "bulbules"?

T wrote:
....
What is a "bulbules"?

the little bulbs that form up top on some
kinds of garlic.

this is a pic of a garlic top from the hardneck
garlic i grow, you can see the little flowers and
the little bulbs that form. normally you don't
get a secondary top growing out of it like this one
(which is why i took the picture).

http://www.anthive.com/flowers/100_8088_Garlic_Top.jpg

the little bulbs are viable and edible. plant them
and you'll get a single clove by the end of the first
season, it takes a few years (two to three) to get them
up to normal bulbs of garlic size (with multiple cloves).

i've had thousands of these each year even when i've
been trying to limit them by cutting them off i usually
miss a few here or there (some stalks fall sideways).
every one that is missed can root and form a new plant...


songbird

On 05/07/2016 04:07 AM, songbird wrote:
T wrote:
...
What is a "bulbules"?

the little bulbs that form up top on some
kinds of garlic.

this is a pic of a garlic top from the hardneck
garlic i grow, you can see the little flowers and
the little bulbs that form. normally you don't
get a secondary top growing out of it like this one
(which is why i took the picture).

http://www.anthive.com/flowers/100_8088_Garlic_Top.jpg

the little bulbs are viable and edible. plant them
and you'll get a single clove by the end of the first
season, it takes a few years (two to three) to get them
up to normal bulbs of garlic size (with multiple cloves).

i've had thousands of these each year even when i've
been trying to limit them by cutting them off i usually
miss a few here or there (some stalks fall sideways).
every one that is missed can root and form a new plant...


songbird



Thank you!