Garlic Yield

[fos]

is getting close to planting time for garlic. which is mid-october-ish here in western new york.

i'm learning from mistakes and hoping to increase my yield in 2023. in

2021 we planted 120 cloves. out of that we harvested 87 bulbs. during curing some went soft and we were left with 76 bulbs. the largest were set aside to plant another 120 cloves. we have plenty to left to enjoy eating but not enough.

i used shredded straw as a mulch for the winter and think i put it down too early and pulled it off too late. there were quite a few plants which sprouted but never made it to the surface through the mulch. it matted heavily over the winter. a few plants that crawled around a bit underneath trying to get out survived but grew into 2 clove mini-garlic.

is it wrong to expect a better yield using a better methods. 63% seems quite low.

[Wilson]

We plant here in coastal Maine towards the last of November at Lat. 45. We have been a bit late and actually planted it in frosted mud without troubles.You might be too early and get too much growth in the fall.

We also use Rocambole hard-neck German Red garlic and plant it so the bottom of the clove is down twice as deep as the clove - about 2" down on a 1" clove. Got more bulbs than the cloves we planted this year do to splitting.

The next two links are very good instructionals from the Univ. of Maine.

Growing garlic -

Harvesting garlic - Some folks leave the mulch on and don't take it off, but I usually remove about 1/2 of it and leave the rest for mulching and soil amending.

[songbird]

that is pretty low. i may not always get perfect bulbs back but i rarely lose a lot of what i plant.

i don't mulch at all. hard neck garlic. normally plant anytime between Oct 1st and the day before the ground freezes. it is very hardy stuff - i've never been able to kill it off.

mainly for us it is a matter of me remembering to get it done.

this past year i didn't plant enough so i'll increase my cloves this time around.

full sun, good drainage, reasonable soil quality. keep watered and weeded. i don't trim scapes. the largest cloves planted give back nice sized bulbules so i grow those to give away to people who want to plant garlic. it is one of the most popular things i have to give out.

i better put it on my list of things to get done the next few weeks as after that i'm likely to be too busy with other things.

songbird

[T]

Everyone else tells you to do that. How did you figure out they were blowing hot air?

Am I hurting mine by cutting them off?

I do not cut off my white onions scapes, but rather harvest them for seeds when the seeds turn black. Does not seem to hurt them at all.

I have thought of harvesting my garlic seeds, but do seeds not take two years to mature into bulbs?

[songbird]

i try to keep things simple and think in terms of total yeild and have different goals than just the bulb size. i get pretty large cloves (about the size of my thumb) anyways so it must not make that much of a difference for the variety i grow.

nothing wrong doing it other ways, just not a thing i worry about.

if i weren't able to give them away then it would be another source of garlic for eating - one form or another it's edible.

if you're cutting the scapes off early i don't think it hurts anything - to me the issue would be more if you were leaving them to grow more and then cutting them off since then that would be a wasted leaf/stem that meant the energy could have gone the other direction instead.

onions that have flowered often have an odd shape to the bulb and a lot of people don't like that for cooking prep. i just work around it. this season i had a nice red onion bulb that was off to the side of the flower stalk. it was just as large as most of the onions i get so we used it for cooking. no problem with me at all.

longer than that for larger garlic bulbs (3-5yrs). as you've seen when you start from little scapes or bulbs it takes time to get bigger to get to the bigger bulbs and cloves. if you keep eating all your biggest cloves you'll not get bigger bulbs the next season.

the reason to plant scapes or small cloves would be to increase your overall plant count as much as possible in a short period of time. i've done it, it works, i've had thousands of scapes growing and eventually many of them got harvested after some years, but since i'd scattered them in alfalfa and birdsfoot trefoil it was tough to get them all out of there later...

songbird

[Wilson]

I think not cutting off the scapes means you are missing out on a wonderful garlic by-product of Scape Pesto. And you WILL get bigger bulbs that way. I cut my scapes off when they tips have made it 3/4 of the way back to vertical. I keep the stem and toss everything from the blossom out.

We planted 2 x 96 of our biggest cloves and got garlic on them all. And the scapes processed with olive oil, parmesan cheese, a bit of salt and nut of your choice (walnut works for me) and we got over 24 cups of pesto. Instant garlic bread spread, put on crackers or with pasta. Yum

[fos]

thanks for the advice everyone.

some things i'm changing;

we planted way too deep last fall. i don't remember what compelled us to do it, but we planted six inches deep. d'oh! this year will be between two to three inches depending on size of cloves.

the prior two years we purchased seed garlic from Burpee. Romanian Red, hardneck, and their advice was to plant soon as the garlic, which was ordered late summer, arrived. that was early to mid october. by mid october the bed will prepared, but the garlic isn't going to be planted until we get a good hard frost and the soil is a bit crusty. we had growth make it to the surface in the fall the last two years. i've read it can act like a straw to suck moisture out of the cloves causing rot once killed by the cold.

we do need to mulch i think. our winters now consist of quite a few freezing and thawing cycles anymore. we need to mulch to help prevent heaving. we'll put it down several inches thick once the ground is nearly frozen and pull it off in the spring as it thaws leaving only enough to keep weeds down. will look for and push back down any cloves found on the surface.

with good soil amendments, plenty of organic material and proper nutrients, and maintaining moist soil throughout winter which got ignored the first two years, i'm expecting much better results next year.

i'm with others here, we remove the scapes and make garlic scape & basil pesto with most of it. the rest i use in salads. we cut them off after they make one loop and point at the sky again. any longer than that they can become too "woody", so i have read.

[songbird]

[e-mail] wrote: ...

i don't think that should be that much of a problem really as if you have to worry about that dry of a climate then you would have to water during the dry and warmer spells. during the really cold times there shouldn't be that much transpiration happening anyways.

also remember that the bulb and cloves don't form until the following warmer season so there shouldn't be an issue with anything from the stems affecting the bulb unless you stop watering too soon, have a drought or something else strange happens.

i've never had a problem with frost heaving garlic out of the ground, but i have had some cloves get uprooted by deer trampling around looking for other things to eat.

:) hope it works out! :)

planting small cloves and anything extra you might have down deeper is a way to get some good green garlic the following spring and into early summer but i've found out that i just don't have the time to dig it up that time of the year so i don't grow it any more (i don't have a lot of extra garlic now too that i'm growing less than i used to and i'm not pulling up much from other spots).

songbird

[Wilson]

Just curious. How much does everyone spend for 'seed garlic?'

Or for that matter, how much do you sell it for?

[songbird]

Wilson wrote: ...

i've never bought seed garlic. the garlic i've been growing for many years was given to me by a friend and i've been paying it forwards ever since.

i only grow a limited amount so i try to give it away to people who will also pay it forward to others.

the best place for anyone to get garlic from me is at the annual seed swap (or now to show up at the monthly garden club meeting :) ). if i know you're going to be there looking for garlic you could e-mail me and let me know so i'm sure to bring some. just as a general note not aimed specifically at you. :)

i say it is the best place because it means i'm not having to spend money mailing it (which is getting to be pretty expensive) and i can distribute samples to multiple people for just the price of getting there.

songbird

[Wilson]

Thanks, songbird. Not looking to buy or swap any as I planted a lot and got a lot. Fedco seeds is selling their German Red certified organic for about $25/lb. Got our first frost of the season last night.