Harvest zone 4

9 years ago

The potato onions all went down last week so they came out today. They didn't "nest out" to as many as I hoped, but the size is bigger than I normally get; so not complaining , and I just couldn't stop and took up the remaining garlics, too. That just leaves Copra onions still in the garden nd yet to be harvested.

The last garlics were all hardnecks with very few bulbs of any of them except the feral I collected last summer under 2". The largest were Japanese and often with few cloves so their clove size was also very large, very much like Music cloves. Siberian was next just edging out Viet Namese Red and Music. In fact all these hardnecks did very well and they all have enough superior sized bulbs to provide a real nice seedstock for what little I will need for this fall. I see no reason to cull any of those varieties.

I was especially pleased with my Japs. I was not aware that they grew such huge cloves on such nice sized bulbs. The foliage is heavy, too. The look almost more like leeks in the planting bed. I know these are Japanese garlic, since the bulbs I got for seed stock last fall looked just like what I dug this evening. I actually called the supplier last fall and was assured that their Japanese had done exceptionally well last year. Well it did real well this year, too.

The feral produced some bulbs almost double the size of the tiny ones I collected last summer and the bulbils produced a nice set of rounds. It would be nice if this family heirloom sized up a bit more next year.

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Comments (2)

hortster
9 years ago
Hey Dutch,

A side note. Much earlier I posted a thread about wind whipped Spanish Roja. Out of 200+ cloves I got about 6-8 lbs. of garlic but the darned things were ALL 1" to 1-1/4" bulbs vs. the larger bulbs that I got before, most had "OK" sized cloves but only 4, maybe 5 per bulb. Remember that we had 4-5 days of sustained 30 to (mostly) 40 MPH winds at the first part of May.

I'm going to try some new vars this next fall and build a wind screen for the next planting.

I've got some feral like yours and they produced the same darned 1" to 1-1/4" bulbs, so it must have been the wind.

Wish I could report a great garlic crop like yours!

The 'Candy' onion crop was good, as usual and is hanging in the garage to cure. It got beat up a little but was small when the wind came so wasn't affected as much.

This post was edited by hortster on Sun, Jul 13, 14 at 21:19
OldDutch (Zone 4 MN)
Original Author
9 years ago
hortster,

My garden is in the backyard of my small city lot. I am lucky to be protected from wind from all directions. (Not from the hail however or the squirrels). I grew up on a farm on the open prairie in NW Iowa and understand about the wind. About the only time the wind really dies down there is just before the big cold drops start to fall out of an afternoon thunderstorm.

I have my problems with the softnecks. They all came out tiny this year, but the hardnecks did well. The softnecks wintered all right, but then just moped. I probably have the wrong ones for this far north, but I think I have the right hardnecks. We may not have a long enough spring for some of the softnecks to grow the necessary tops (???).

I like fewer but larger cloves, rather than messing around with dinky ones. Siberian, Music, and Viet Namese Red all did well for me this year. Those three stood up straight and tall the entire season. Japanese did fabulously, but there was a little lodging toward the end which didn't seem to affect bulb size, but then Japanese had by far the heaviest tops of the wholeworks, looking more like leeks in some respects. They all wintered very well through last winters cold that got down below -20 F a number of times. We did have an early and persistent snow cover which certainly helped.

Music I have had longest, and I find that its reputation for being dependable is very well deserved. It definitely is a strong garlic with very large cloves, if few of them.

You might want to give Music a try, it is supposed to be very widely adapted.
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