On Sat, 19 Apr 2003 11:51:53 -0400, Gary Woods
wrote:

You should pull apart and separate and re-plant immediately. They will
likely do better than you expect. Plant all the excess close together and
use for "green garlic," like scallions but garlicky.

That's funny, I have some hardneck Italian garlic, and over the past 5
years cultivated it...last fall I gave some to an Italian friend and
he called it "green garlic" (the bulb itself). He loved it, said it
was some of the best garlic he ever had (which is really saying
something ).

Briefly, garlic has the worst of both worlds:
Lousy competitor and heavy feeder. Keep it well-weeded and/or mulched,
supply enough water if your season is dry. Cut off the scapes to put all
the energy into the bulb.

Lots of sun too. At least 4-5 hours of direct sun, which isn't too
tough early in the year, but once the trees bud-out it's pretty tough
around here.

By some miracle I haven't had a lot of trouble with weeds. What I do
is _thoroughly_ shred all the autumn leaves (particularly oak) with
the lawn mower. I then pick up neighbors' bagged leaves on the
roadside and shred those THEN I dig it into the raised beds and
plant the garlic. Then one last "bed" cover of 4-inch thick shredded
leaf mulch over winter. I've guessed this kills any annuals because
the seeds partially sprout in the hot-shredded leaves...then the hard
winter freeze summarily kills them.

Whatever the case, these preparations have made for ZERO-weeding and
nice-size bulbs the past 5 years. Now that I think about it,
everywhere else _except_ the garlic beds, weeds are a constant pain,
especially lambsquarters...I gota get more leaves Lambsquarters,
bleh, what a pain. Almost as bad as ground ivy.

In my opinion garlic is one of the easiest plants in the garden. The
investment of shredding leaves and mulching the plants in autumn is
worth the peace of mind knowing that it's ALWAYS the first plant to
rise in spring, getting a head start over all other crops. The fact
that deer never go NEAR the stuff is also a major advantage. Every
year it's planted around the perimeter of the garden and is a foot
tall long before the tree-buds sprout.

and plenty of moisture when the bulbs are forming you'll get big
bulbs. Lousy insipid garlic, but big bulbs.

I'm biased, if you can't tell...

I agree about big bulbs being weaker. Last year I had some German
Extra Hardy that got 8 hours of sunlight in brand-new heavily
manured/mulched raised beds. They stalks were 3 feet high and the
bulbs were near-baseball size, but didn't hold a candle to the power
of the slightly larger-than golf-ball sized Italian hardnecks. Maybe
GEH is simply less powerful by nature, but it was definetly different.

Dan