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.

Ok, got the most promising clumps and separated and replanted. Now I
understand the urgency -- the largest clumps were difficult to separate
without serious damage. But most I was able to gently divide. Some
went in a pot for my mom's garden.

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.

We use plenty of organic matter here (that we grow very well due to the
equine manure-o-matics we keep).

If you give them lots of chemical nitrogen in the earlier foliage growing
phase, 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...

That's ok. I'm just hoping for something that actually resembles a bulb
instead of just a slightly larger clove. Huge is not what I'm after,
but tasty will do just fine. I see now after the separation process
that I did have a few good bulbs but I just didn't get to harvest them.

Thanks for the advice!

Mary



Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at www.albany.net/~gwoods
Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1200' elevation. NY WO G