late winter notes
 

today we had a few inches of fluffy
snow to cover. yay! looks nice to see
some snow on the ground.

wandered around the gardens yesterday to
see how things were faring as spring is
getting nearer.

sadly we've not had much snow cover and
the temperatures have been well below
freezing so all the nice garlic tops that
were green and growing have been frozen.
last winter there was snow cover to keep
the worst of the cold from damaging the
tops so we went into spring with plenty of
top growth. it will be interesting to see
if it makes much difference with the final
results.

the spring bulbs continue to try to poke
up further, but it will still be a while yet
before the flowers appear.

the wormies in the worm farm are still
chugging along. i'm at full capacity of
14 containers and most of them are pretty
well populated by now with worms. the last
few started only a month or two ago will take
a bit longer to get busy, but whatever they
do break down of the paper and veggie scraps
is a big improvement over the base clay garden
soil i've mixed in. at least with the worm
bins i do get some chance to play in the dirt
through the winter.

and we are starting to plan what we will
plant where for the veggie gardens. a month
or six weeks and i should be able to start
some of the early planting if we don't have
any late big snow storms. we'll see...


songbird

late winter notes
 

songbird wrote:

sadly we've not had much snow cover and
the temperatures have been well below
freezing so all the nice garlic tops that
were green and growing have been frozen.

Prolly won't hurt them a lot, though it costs the cloves some energy. Don't
know about your location, but maybe planting a bit later would help; best
to not see any top growth before winter sets in.

--
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

late winter notes
 

In article ,
songbird wrote:

sadly we've not had much snow cover and
the temperatures have been well below
freezing so all the nice garlic tops that
were green and growing have been frozen.
last winter there was snow cover to keep
the worst of the cold from damaging the
tops so we went into spring with plenty of
top growth. it will be interesting to see
if it makes much difference with the final
results.

Mine is usually up and frozen and does not mind a bit. I would not
stress about it. I suppose there might be types that would mind, but
they won't survive the local selection process...even the stuff that's
behind (still down in the ground) will come up in spring and get frozen
multiple times. Last year most of the bed was up and getting frozen off
and on from December onwards. Didn't seem to affect it at all - not even
foliage damage. I like garlic from the easy-care perspective.

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

late winter notes
 

Gary Woods wrote:
songbird wrote:

sadly we've not had much snow cover and
the temperatures have been well below
freezing so all the nice garlic tops that
were green and growing have been frozen.

Prolly won't hurt them a lot, though it costs the cloves some energy. Don't
know about your location, but maybe planting a bit later would help; best
to not see any top growth before winter sets in.

i'm in mid-michigan here, normally (or naturally)
these garlics if left alone will start regrowing
mid-to-late August. these are then harvested the
next summer.

if i don't replant them until there is no chance
of them starting to grow again i'd have to wait
until late November or perhaps even longer now that
we are having such wimpy winters.

i'll see how these turn out. waiting longer to
plant would be better as i could put another crop
in that space before the garlic.


songbird

late winter notes
 

Ecnerwal wrote:
songbird wrote:

sadly we've not had much snow cover and
the temperatures have been well below
freezing so all the nice garlic tops that
were green and growing have been frozen.
last winter there was snow cover to keep
the worst of the cold from damaging the
tops so we went into spring with plenty of
top growth. it will be interesting to see
if it makes much difference with the final
results.

Mine is usually up and frozen and does not mind a bit. I would not
stress about it. I suppose there might be types that would mind, but
they won't survive the local selection process...even the stuff that's
behind (still down in the ground) will come up in spring and get frozen
multiple times. Last year most of the bed was up and getting frozen off
and on from December onwards. Didn't seem to affect it at all - not even
foliage damage. I like garlic from the easy-care perspective.

i wouldn't say i'm stressed by it, just curious
how much of a difference there might be.

my guess is that even if there is some damage
the added days of growth and putting energy
down into the soil and roots will pay off.
the plants had two and a half months of growth
before it finally got too cold for them to do
much, but they stayed green up until we had
overnight lows in the single digits.

we'll see what next summer brings.


songbird