Garlic

Plant of the Week - Garlic 

originally posted on Knoxville Area Gardening Tips- June 30, 2016

If you have never grown garlic, it is one of the easiest crops to grow and you can grow a year's supply in a relatively small area. And you can even save your own "seed".

There are two main types of garlic and multitudes of varieties within each type.

 













Hardneck Garlic has a tough inner stalk in the center of a ring of usually, quite large cloves. This type of garlic is usually recommended for further north, but I have not had any trouble getting good harvests. Hardneck garlic also gives you a harvest of the developing flower heads, aka. garlic scapes, in the spring. You rarely see hardneck in stores because they only keep well for 3-4 months. This type is said to have some of the more interesting flavors.

Softneck- does have a soft stalk and is perfect for making garlic braids. There are more cloves per head, but they are smaller than those of hardneck varieties. This type keeps quite long. I current have two heads left from last year's harvest, and they are a little dried out, but definitely in usable condition, though I have little motivation to use them. This year's harvest of fresh, juicy garlic has just finished curing.

2014 Garlic & Shallot Harvest

It is best to order your garlic online, or purchase it from a local grower. If you purchase it locally be sure to ask what variety it is. So, if you catch the garlic growing bug, you will know what you already have.

2015 Garlic & Shallot Harvest

Now for a little information on growing garlic.

It does like soil that is fairly loose and has a moderate amount of fertility. Some compost added to the bed a month or so before planting is what I have seen most often recommended. You can use a spading for to loosen the soil, the big issue is, you don't want to break the leaf stalk off of the bulb when you are harvesting. You plant in October. Putting the cloves 6 inches apart and about 4 inches deep. Mulch with straw or something simular to prevent weeds. The garlic will start to grow green straplike leaves. Don't worry if there are freezes, even if the tops are frozen the growing garlic in the ground will be fine. When spring comes the leaf growth will accelerate dramatically. If you have hardneck, keep an eye out for scapes and harvest them after the have made a full circle. This will keep you plant from putting energy into making a flower. In June or early July you will see the leaves dying from the bottom up. When about half the leaves have turned brown, dig up a test head to make sure the head has divided into cloves. If they have, harvest your garlic. You then need to cure it so it will store well. Put it in a well ventilated, sheltered place out of direct sun for a week or so. After that select the best, unblemished heads to save for "seed" for next years crop and store it all in a relatively cool location. I store my seed garlic in a dry room in our basement and my cooking garlic, on my kitchen walls.
 

2016 Garlic & Shallot Harvest

I am able to grow over 100 heads in a 10'X 3.5' bed in which I also grow shallots as they have the same growing cycle and needs. This gives our family a year's supply of garlic, with "seed" for next year and a little to give away.

Here is a link to a website with lots of good information on growing garlic and different varieties of garlic.
http://www.gourmetgarlicgardens.com/growing-garlic.html

My Seedstarting Journey - Repost form March 2008

Here is a writeup of my history with seedstarting from March of 2008.  When I have a moment I will do a step by step through the process I started using then and still use today.

Seed starting has been another area of learning through failure. Four years ago I tried to start seeds without a fluorescent light, put one seed in each 2" soil block. I had poor germination and leggy plants which meant a lot of wasted space. The transplants were decent but it took a lot of energy to set them out every warm day.

The next year I got a 2 tube four foot long shop light and a timer for it. I still did most everything else the same. Wasted space where seeds did not germinate and took a lot of time making the soil blocks and gently watering them. Had very good transplants. I did a lot of setting plants out on warm days to harden them off and let my peppers get too cold but had good plants and good crops that year.

Last year I got a second shop light, decided to use yogurt cups we had saved instead of soil blocks and had read about germinating seed in paper towel. These steps considerably reduced the time and space need and produced transplants that looked better than you could buy. I also had read about the one thing a week and heard that you should not set tomato plants and pepper plants out until night time temperatures are consistently 50 and 55 degrees respectively.

This year I have taken all the learning from previous years and worked on fitting seed starting into small bits of time here and there. I have also been thoughtful about how many transplants I want to raise. I will plant 10 pepper plants and 14 tomato plants, so I want to grow on about twice that number and will only pot up that many sprouted seeds.

I'm really looking forward to Spring and Summer this year.