Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Garlic, and Next Year More Garlic

Two heads of Garlic,  November 16th, 2012
      Last year a neighbor gave me two heads of named garlic, a first for me.  The head on the left was Red Russian, and the head on the right was Music.


      The Red Russian divided into eleven cloves, nearly 50% more than the seven cloves I got from the Music bulb.  The cloves were planted on November 16th of last year.  The bulbs were harvested in July of this year, with one bulb of Music lost to the wet early summer.  Many of the Red Russian bulbs felt a little spongy, also because of the wet soil.  The bulbs were dried for a couple of weeks on a rack in the porch, then bagged and forgotten in the garage.


      Hoping it is not too late to plant garlic, I rescued the bulbs from their stay in the garage.  The Music bulbs felt pretty firm, and split up nicely into 37 cloves that would be planted.


      These are the biggest, plumpest cloves of garlic I have ever seen!  Look at that one monster to the left of my thumb.  And from the taste test back in July, quite tasty too.


      The Music cloves were planted at the east end of bed number two in the back yard garden.  The more numerous but smaller cloves of Red Russian were planted in a group near the middle of bed number two.  Two of the Red Russian bulbs had dried to essentially dust, and many of the small cloves were just discarded.  Music certainly won the first year competition, though Red Russian may just have disliked the wet spring and early summer.  Next year could be completely different.


      The cloves were pushed down into the soil in three shallow trenches, then lightly covered.  From just one head each last year, I should have a monster haul next year.  And then..... the numbers get mind boggling.

3 comments:

  1. That will be quite a lot of garlic! I've tried planting it twice, and both times it rotted. :( I'm going to try a new way...I just read a blog post about how to plant it in pots and keep it protected over winter.

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  2. George, I have planted garlic several times in our area and I get a few bulbs but not as many as I would like. I don't know if I am digging them up too soon or what, but I think I will try to find the varieties that you have there and give it another try. Now is the time to plant in our area too. I must remember to come back in July and see how you do!

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  3. I planted about 40 cloves last year and it was too much for us, so this year we downsized a bit on our regular - German Porcelain, but added two new varieties to try the taste and how it compares in growth.

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