My garlic is a disaster

[hendi_alex]

Why not do like I do and plant about 2.5x what will be harvested as mature bulbs. Then use the extras, harvesting and eating the entire scallion like plant. Garlic used at this stage doesn't seem quite as pungent as mature cloves, but is still very good and is a much better product with a much more reasonable price than any alternative.

[evtubbergh]

@PunkRotten So what happened? Did you have piles of good garlic underground?

[hendi_alex]

You should really consider my October overplanting method. We harvest about 50 plants between December and May, using the entire plant just like spring onions. With that adjustment we now get out of the garden garlic 12 months per year. The immature plants are a little different than the pungent fully mature cloves but are a tasty, high quality product.

Also be sure to have an assortment of softneck varietes as some store much longer than others.

[PunkRotten]

@PunkRotten So what happened? Did you have piles of good garlic underground?

Half of them were decent. The other half were really tiny and I will be replanting these in OCT. I am debating on whether I should increase the amount of garlic or should I do more onions. My onions are bulbing up nice right now. If I do garlic I will try other varities in addition to what I pulled aside. I've tried about a total of 8 varieties now and really the only one that has grown really well was the Music garlic.

[mattie g]

You should really consider my October overplanting method. We harvest about 50 plants between December and May, using the entire plant just like spring onions. With that adjustment we now get out of the garden garlic 12 months per year. The immature plants are a little different than the pungent fully mature cloves but are a tasty, high quality product.

Also be sure to have an assortment of softneck varietes as some store much longer than others.

I grow one softneck and one hardneck variety each year for precisely this reason - I've got Chesnok Red and Inchelium Red planted this year. The softnecks store much longer, so we have some garden-grown garlic available to us at least through winter. In fact, I still have a few small bulbs left from last year, though they've started to sprout and are of lesser quality now than they would have been if we had eaten them three or four months ago. Even so, I'd prefer to eat that than buy garlic from the store.

[hendi_alex]

I plant both hard neck and soft neck varieties. Problem is none last much beyond January. So we pull the immature current crop as needed, to fill the period between January and May. That has worked very well for the past two seasons, giving good quality fresh garlic 12 months per year.