I want to grow some garlic, but can I just use the elephant garlic I buy at
the store and just plant the cloves or do I have to do something different?
Never seen garlic plants or anything garlic at the garden centers. In zone
5.

TIA

Jimmy

Jimmy wrote:
I want to grow some garlic, but can I just use the elephant garlic I buy at
the store and just plant the cloves or do I have to do something different?
Never seen garlic plants or anything garlic at the garden centers. In zone
5.



I never plant anything that I buy from the supermarket. You don't know
if or how it has been treated or if there are any diseases that wouldn't
affect consumption but would affect new growth.

Potatoes, for example, are treated to prevent sprouting. Also, there's
no indication if the spud carries any diseases as I noted above. The
same may or may not apply to other supermarket produce, but to be safe,
I use nothing but certified seeds/sets.

Garlic set can be bought quite cheaply. Garlic needs a long season to
mature as well. Even if I get mine in this week, I don't expect to get
very large bulbs by October. I plan to try overwintering my garlic for
next year.

..

Zone 5b in Canada's Far East.

"Jimmy" wrote:

I want to grow some garlic, but can I just use the elephant garlic I buy at
the store and just plant the cloves or do I have to do something different?

You'll find the basics on my personal web page, in the .sig below.

Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic
Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

Jimmy wrote:
I want to grow some garlic, but can I just use the elephant garlic I buy at
the store and just plant the cloves or do I have to do something different?
Never seen garlic plants or anything garlic at the garden centers. In zone
5.

TIA

Jimmy


Too late for this year.

I wouldn't plant anything from the stores personally. Most
often they have softneck, which if you we don't care for.
But that's just us.

Elephant "garlic", it not garlic. It's a member of the lily
family. While people use it as garlic, it isn't.

Google is your friend... ;-)

http://www.naturalhub.com/grow_veget...ype_garlic.htm



--
Steve
http://adirondackoutdoors.forumcircle.com

On Sat, 05 May 2007 23:45:15 GMT, Gary Woods
wrote:

"Jimmy" wrote:

I want to grow some garlic, but can I just use the elephant garlic I buy at
the store and just plant the cloves or do I have to do something different?

You'll find the basics on my personal web page, in the .sig below.

Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic
Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G


It was your postings in this group that inspired me to putting our
first garlic planting last fall. Things look lovely so far this spring
here in northern NJ, and we are looking forward to our first harvest
later on.

The blueberry bushes suck this year and I lost a dogwood over the
winter, though.

Boron

On Sun, 6 May 2007 01:08:21 UTC, Steve Calvin
opined:

I wouldn't plant anything from the stores personally. Most
often they have softneck, which if you we don't care for.
But that's just us.

Elephant "garlic", it not garlic. It's a member of the lily
family. While people use it as garlic, it isn't.

I'm confused, am I reading you correctly?. It (Alium Ampeloprasum)
isn't a garlic (Alium) because it is a member of the lily family?
Would you like to expand on that?

--
Stan Goodman

On May 5, 7:10 pm, "Jimmy" wrote:
I want to grow some garlic, but can I just use the elephant garlic I buy at
the store and just plant the cloves or do I have to do something different?
Never seen garlic plants or anything garlic at the garden centers. In zone
5.

TIA

Jimmy

My elephant garlic were from the supermarket a few years ago. The
first several years I didn't eat any but replanted everything. Now I
plant over 100 every year in the fall. It takes 2 years to produce
really big ones. You take the one year olds that are rounds that
didn't develop cloves and plant them for giants. Some rounds are as
big as a baseball.

"Jimmy" wrote in message
. ..
I want to grow some garlic, but can I just use the elephant garlic I buy
at
the store and just plant the cloves or do I have to do something
different?
Never seen garlic plants or anything garlic at the garden centers. In zone
5.

I went to my local farmers market this morning and bought some elephant
cloves that had just started to put out roots. They are going in the garden.
The grower is local. I also got some standard garlic that is almost ready.
Check out local fresh suppliers of garlic.

rob

Stan Goodman wrote:
On Sun, 6 May 2007 01:08:21 UTC, Steve Calvin
opined:

I wouldn't plant anything from the stores personally. Most
often they have softneck, which if you we don't care for.
But that's just us.

Elephant "garlic", it not garlic. It's a member of the lily
family. While people use it as garlic, it isn't.

I'm confused, am I reading you correctly?. It (Alium Ampeloprasum)
isn't a garlic (Alium) because it is a member of the lily family?
Would you like to expand on that?

I meant to say the leek family *not* lily....

but to answer your question.... you really should learn to
use a search engine if you're going to "play" on the
internet and usenet realms...

Russian garlic (Allium ampeloprasum var. ampeloprasum) is
not a true garlic, but actually a variant of the species to
which the garden leek belongs. It has a tall, solid,
flowering stalk and broad, flat leaves much like those of
the leek, but forms a bulb consisting of very large,
garlic-like cloves. The flavor of these, while not exactly
like garlic, is much more similar to garlic than to leeks.
The flavor is milder than garlic, and much more palatable to
some people than garlic when used raw as in salads.

The mature bulb is broken up into cloves which are quite
large and with papery skins and these are used for both
culinary purposes and propagation. There are also much
smaller cloves with a hard shell that occur on the outside
of the bulb. These are often ignored, but if they are
planted, they will the first year produce a non-flowering
plant which has a solid bulb, essentially a single large
clove. In their second year, this single clove will break up
into many separate cloves. Elephant garlic is not generally
propagated by seeds.

Some people use the young unopened flowering heads as a
vegetable.

The plant, if left alone, will spread into a clump with many
flowering heads. These are often left in flower gardens as
an ornamental and to discourage pests.

--
Steve
http://adirondackoutdoors.forumcircle.com

Boron Elgar wrote:


It was your postings in this group that inspired me to putting our
first garlic planting last fall. Things look lovely so far this spring
here in northern NJ

It's good to share the infection.... most of my garlic plants are 6" high
now; I imagine yours are higher. Things are almost dried out enough to put
Mr. Troy-Bilt to work and put in sugar snap peas!


Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic
Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

Gary Woods wrote:
Boron Elgar wrote:

It was your postings in this group that inspired me to putting our
first garlic planting last fall. Things look lovely so far this spring
here in northern NJ

It's good to share the infection.... most of my garlic plants are 6" high
now; I imagine yours are higher. Things are almost dried out enough to put
Mr. Troy-Bilt to work and put in sugar snap peas!


Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic
Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

Yours are almost ready now Gary?? Mine are about 8-9 inches
now but haven't scaped yet let alone begun to dry. Mine
won't be ready until probably late next month or possibly
even into early July. a

--
Steve
http://adirondackoutdoors.forumcircle.com

Jimmy, I bought my first Elephant Garlic from our local grocery store, and
planted all 3 cloves. That was about 9 years ago. Now I have about 125
elephant garlic plants coming up and they will be ready for this years
harvest. I still have about 18 heads of it to give to a friend of mine from
last years harvest, and another 6 for my use until I harvest this years
crop.

I plant it at the end of August or early Sept. The next June or July they
are ready to harvest. I plant only the largest cloves off of the heads and
use or give away the rest. As long as I maintain this schedule, I get a
perfect crop each summer. If I am late planting it, the next year a lot of
them wont mature and I have to stick them back into the ground until the
following year. They also form small nodules on the sides of some of the
heads. Don't let them fall back into the ground. If you do, they will come
up the next year and wont develop into cloves. You will have to replant them
for the second year to give them a chance to mature.

Dwayne


"Jimmy" wrote in message
. ..
I want to grow some garlic, but can I just use the elephant garlic I buy at
the store and just plant the cloves or do I have to do something different?
Never seen garlic plants or anything garlic at the garden centers. In zone
5.

TIA

Jimmy

Steve Calvin wrote:

Yours are almost ready now Gary??

Oh goodness no! The German White foliage will get a good 4 feet high. I
usually harvest in early-mid August, after going to the Seed Saver's
Exchange gathering in late July.


Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic
Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

Gary Woods wrote:
Steve Calvin wrote:

Yours are almost ready now Gary??

Oh goodness no! The German White foliage will get a good 4 feet high. I
usually harvest in early-mid August, after going to the Seed Saver's
Exchange gathering in late July.


Gary Woods AKA K2AHC- PGP key on request, or at home.earthlink.net/~garygarlic
Zone 5/6 in upstate New York, 1420' elevation. NY WO G

Phew... you had me worried. ;-)

GW at 4 feet? Wow. I usually do German White, red and
Spanish Roja and they're usually 2 feet tops. I just looked
and they're currently about 12-15 inches.

What size bulbs do you get on those four footers?



--
Steve
http://adirondackoutdoors.forumcircle.com

On Sun, 06 May 2007 12:58:56 GMT, Gary Woods
wrote:

Boron Elgar wrote:


It was your postings in this group that inspired me to putting our
first garlic planting last fall. Things look lovely so far this spring
here in northern NJ

It's good to share the infection.... most of my garlic plants are 6" high
now; I imagine yours are higher. Things are almost dried out enough to put
Mr. Troy-Bilt to work and put in sugar snap peas!

We're dry enough to till, but I grow most of my vegetables in pots up
on the deck. I keep some tomatoes and garlic and blueberries down in
the garden, but I use the deck for other things to keep them from
being eaten by groundhogs.

Boron