For both garlics I had two heads from the same source. I refrigerated one head of each for the month of October and kept the other head at room temperature. I planted all the heads on Nov 1st.

Here are the plants as of 1-19, the porcelain on the left, purplestripe on the right. In each rock ringed bed the refrigerated plants are on the right side.

Garlic

Results: the cloves that were treated in the refrigerator are dramatically larger as of mid-winter, and comparable in size to neighboring artichoke and asiatic (early) garlics. I expect they will produce earlier and/or larger bulbs. I'll post an update at harvest time. This may be a method to allow garlics that are more suited to northern climates to be reliably grown in southern climates where they would otherwise mature too late when summer heat would cause them to be stunted.

This year I chilled all my bulbs, but tried planting about a month earlier and later than the beginning of November like last year. The early plantings grew fast, but suffered during a long stretch of days in the 90's. Some varities did not die, but went dormant. Others varities (Red Toch & Inchelium Red) died back and/or are falling over. The Creoles are growing again, but splitting the stalks. Some of them are sending up lots of leaves so I think they had developed into small segmented bulbs and each of the small cloves is sprouting up through the original stalk.

The late plantings are growing well with 3-5 leaves each and I hope they will bulb up ok. We had temps in the mid 20's this month and the leaves were frozen each morning, but seem to be ok.

I did plant some around the end of Oct. or beginning of Nov. (I did not keep records as good as last year). Some of that looks pretty good. The Guatamalan Ikeda is doing great with between 9 & 13 leaves each.

Please keep us informed on your experiment. I'd like to know how they do as far as forming bulbs and scapes. Also, what dates they are ready to dig. We are both in zone 9b, but I'm in Florida, so I'm sure there will be some differences.

Michael

From 2009-10-01

Unfortunately they don't store well because you can't stop them from sprouting.

I'd be happy to swap garlics with you when they come up in late spring. I have 1 creole, one porcelain, one purplestripe, 2 asiatic, 2 turbin, one silverskin and 6 artichoke.

The silverskin emerged even after the untreated porcelains and purplestripes. I only had one head though, so I couldn't do the experiment on it with a control group.

This is my 3rd year growing garlic.
1st yr. - Music and Legacy - Did not prechill-total failure, did not make bulbs.
2nd yr. - Prechill experiment, 7 varieties for warm winter areas. Got bulbs on most of prechilled garlic.
3rd yr. - (this year)Vary planting dates. All bulbs prechilled. I should get some bulbs this year too, although the garlic planted early looks pretty bad. Looks like I might only get rounds on a lot of the early planted stuff.

Rare offshore winds off the high desert bring hard frosts in winter, and in the summer they bring heat waves - most infamously the santa-anna winds blowing off Arizona to SoCal.