Drew, very nice harvest ! where did you get both softneck and hardneck garlics? I am interested in growing some this winter.
Garlic braids are neat to see and for storage!
Now GARLIC is something I’d go for. It’s just about the right time for me to plant it because my onions are getting ready to grow again. Here it’s something that I plant in the fall and harvest in late spring. The leeks are growing now.
I haven’t become a connoisseur, yet, because I’ve only used cloves from the standard store produce dept. for planting.
@MuddyMess_8a, try a garlic trial. I trialed a bunch of garlic with interesting and lofty names, only to settle on the organic California garlic that I’ve been growing for years. Was worth the effort though.
I’ve been trying to grow grocery bought garlic for the past 2 years around fall (like now) but they hardly survive comes next spring. They seem easy from reading other’s success but I guess I just don’t know how!
Tom, my ground doesn’t freeze here and my winter daylight is longer. So, the garlic, onions, and other alliums grow all winter. However, if I plant them in the spring, they don’t have time to grow to their full potential before the heat and lack of rain kills off the tops.
You, OTH, have a longer, cooler spring. Late winter or early spring is likely to be the better planting time for you.
I got both the ones I grew (I’ll grow the Wisconsin strain this next season-almost planting time here!)
here
Many are already sold out. Territorial Seed Co. and Burpee have decent choices too.
[quote=“tomIL, post:604, topic:1303”]
been trying to grow grocery bought garlic for the past 2 years around fall (like now) but they hardly survive comes next spring[/quote]
Like Mr Clint alludes too, many are local. The store stuff may be out of CA and not grow well in the Midwest. I only grew garlic this year for the first time. I picked strains known to withstand severe cold.
Plant the garlic after the first frost!!! Or by Oct 15th. For zones 5 and 6.
I think the following strains will grow well in 5 or 6, Most are already sold out, but you may find them elsewhere, or email them if they have more (as suggested)
http://www.filareefarm.com/seed-garlic-for-sale/ISLAND-ROCAMBOLE.html
All Marbled Purple Stripes do well in cold climates
http://www.filareefarm.com/seed-garlic-for-sale/METECHI-Bulk.html
http://www.filareefarm.com/seed-garlic-for-sale/SUSAN-D.html
http://www.filareefarm.com/seed-garlic-for-sale/IDAHO-SILVER.html
http://www.filareefarm.com/seed-garlic-for-sale/KILLARNEY-RED-Bulk.html
You may also try planting them deeper, say 4 inches instead of two. The last two listed I grew and we got down to -16F, so they are keepers!
I’m not buying any this year. I have plenty to plant from my harvest and from the guy in Wisconsin.
Check out the potatoes, and shallots at this site too!
Speaking of shallots, I grew some this year from seed from territorial. These were tough to grow.
A lot of store bought garlic comes from China and may not work too well. Here’s how to tell if it’s California garlic:
GARLIC: California or China?
Pat Welsh, long time So Cal gardening writer recommends planting garlic here in November. I follow her recommendations fairly closely.
I got my garlic at a farmers market so I know they grow locally. As Drew pointed out there are places online to buy them. The nice thing about hardneck garlic is the scapes that make a delicious pesto sauce. Also when they flower dozens of bulbils develop that can be planted to get more garlic.
Very beautiful looking shallots.
I have no clue that garlics could be imported from China! I thought Gilroy California provides us plenty of garlics! I could smell that town like… miles away! 
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I buy my garlic at an Italian Market, hard neck. California garlic sold here has very small cloves. I never buy it. Our choices are probably limited from California. The Italian market has excellent garlic with huge cloves.
Usually zones 7 -9 are planted January-February.
Some info I had…
The garlic roots will grow whenever the ground is not frozen, and the
tops will grow whenever the temperature is above 40°F. In colder areas,
the goal is to get the garlic to grow roots before the big freeze-up
arrives, but not to make top growth until after the worst of the winter.
In warmer areas, the goal is to get enough top growth to get off to a
roaring start in the spring, but not so much top growth that the leaves
cannot endure the winter. If garlic gets frozen back to the ground in
the winter, it can re-grow, and be fine. If it dies back twice in the
winter, the yield will be decreased from the theoretical possible amount
if you had been luckier with the weather. When properly planted, garlic
can withstand winter lows of -30°F. If planted too early, too much
tender top growth happens before winter. If planted too late, there will
be inadequate root growth before the winter, and a lower survival rate
as well as smaller bulbs.
Here are the bulbs I saved. The dirty long rooted ones are hardnecks I pulled out to use as seed. The cleaner ones were sent to me from Wisconsin. The softneck braid above I plan on using the bottom bulbs.
I also saved the biggest cloves from bulbs I have used for cooking .
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Hmm… I’ll check out a few local Italian market for this hard neck garlic then. Thanks for the idea, Drew.
Tom
Thanks Drew, I will check the link and Italian market. I have elephant garlic growing in the yard which grow well here. But I heard the elephant garlic is not true garlic
No, but good to know it works here, it’s still worth growing.
I have some hard neck put aside for cooking. It will not be the best or biggest cloves but I could send you some cloves. I don’t have that many grade A cloves. I will need them all. They should still grow.
I’m leaving today till Sunday, will mail next week if you want?
Yesterday I did something that it’s unlikely anyone else here was doing at the same time.
I pulled peanuts.
The ground where they are growing stayed soft and loose all season. That made the task much easier. It also made it easier for the blooms to peg down. The peanuts are now sitting outside wrapped in insect netting to cure for awhile. Most will be used as roasting peanuts. Some will become boiled peanuts.
Although the summer conditions here, especially in seasons like this year’s, are hostile to growing many standard summer veggie crops, they provide a long, hot season that peanuts and sweet potatoes grow well in.
Timing the proper time to harvest peanuts is interesting and different than harvesting most veggies. Since the harvestable part grows underground, the entire plant is pulled at one time.The peanuts attached to each plant are not all at the same stage of readiness. Harvest too early and they are undeveloped. Too late and they are overdeveloped and possibly sprouting. So, the timing goes by the when the right percentage of peanuts are at the proper stage.
This would be much easier to determine if the plants did all of their flowering and pegging during a short interval, but they don’t. Actually, mine bloomed periodically throughout the season, and were starting to bloom once more. So, most of plants wind up having a combination of mature peanuts, which become roasters; well developed and filled in but not fully mature peanuts, which become candidates for boiling; tiny developing peanuts, which I don’t know what to do with; and peanuts that have matured to the point of sprouting on their own. The last category I see no reason not to use as other sprouts in salads or stir fries. They could grow into new plants, but it would be sometime in January before they matured in proper growing conditions. Short winter days and high probability of frosts and freeze make it very unlikely that they would survive long enough to make a crop.
I’m happy to report a success with a crop this season, especially since the insects and weather wiped out so many other of my summer veggies. Sadly, I’ve grown to expect and accept summer failures. Instead, I just get happy and excited over the successes. I still try with the things that tend to fail most years, because some years they surprise me and do well. This year cucumbers surprised me by producing for most of the summer. It was the first time in years that I’ve gotten more than one cucumber before insects and disease did them in. That’s why I continue to devote spare space to planting veggies that only occasionally do well.
Now the girls have boiled peanuts to look forward to. We will have roasted peanuts for the fall, and I’ll make a batch of peanut butter. As an added bonus, I have some wonderful composting material to add back to the same area in the form of the pulled plants and the rest of the roots with their nitrogen fixing nodules and symbiotic bacteria.
I had very good crop of garlic this year. I actually have planted it for three years before that and the yield was small, the head and cloves were ridiculously tiny. So I always thought that the garlic is the rare crop that do not grow well in my garden.
This year the same as the previous years I planted softneck garlic that I bought in the store. May be I was lucky to find good strain this time. I had no time to plant them in the autumn so I planted them in the early spring. I think garlic LOVED the abundant rain in June and I fertilized it with dried chicken manure. So this is my strategy in the future - to keep it moist during the June and to fertilize it with that same thing.
Garlic and onions love nitrogen. I was taught to focus on growing the tops, because the top growth is what nourishes the bulbs.
True, it is not garlic (Allium sativum ). Elephant garlic is Allium ampeloprasum. It is in the leek family. For me it is a poor substitute for garlic.
Here is a photo of some of my hardneçk garlic. In the middle are bulbils that developed from the flower head. There are about 40 there that will grow into the small garlic bulbs on the left in one year. The second year they will be full size like the one on the right. Sometimes the bulbils grow into small round garlic cloves. They are delicious rosted. I don’t have a picture since they were eaten shortly after harvest.
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@danzeb, Do you harvest them after the first year and then replant them in Fall, or just leave them in the ground for 2 years?