Have ordered Spanish Roja, Music and Georgian Fire. Will plant German Red from last year. Am relatively new to garlic growing (2-3 years), being mainly in tomato and pepper growing.

Good choices! Music seems to be near the top of of most lists, and Spanish Roja is another classic (it defines garlic for authorities such as Ron Engeland). My Georgia Fire did not size up as well as I had hoped, but it was my first season with them, and it might take a while for them to adapt to my neck of the woods.

My gardening started only a few years back mainly with peppers and herbs. Once I found garlic, even peppers have dropped to a (close) second in my garden priorities. Tomatoes continue to be my bane. I seem to attract every pest and disease. This year one of my tomato beds was devastated with fusarium wilt, and both got unhealthy doses of BER, hornworm, and potato beetle. Everyone tells me how easy maters are to grow, and that just trashes my confidence in my gardening skills.

I ordered an assortment, (having never grown garlic/not knowing which to choose) and just received siberian, metechi, red toch, chesnok red, burgundy, cuban purple, spanish morado, asian morado,siciliano, lau' de tree, and asian stripe...as I've not grown garlic before, can't tell ya if they're good yet...but I love garlic, so anything should be an improvement over grocery store garlic, right?

Hi, I grew 30 varieties last year and am adding 8 more this year.
I have been working on my raised beds the last 2 days getting them ready for planting next month.
The garlics that did the best this year were Romanian red, siberian, korean red, bzenc, and I was really happy with my Red Toch as every bulb was close to 3 inches.
The ones that did the worst were Creole Burgundy, chinese purple and my spanish roja. The rest of them all did nicely and they all will get another year.
Gary

Wow, never seen bulbs as consistently huge as the Red Toch you describe! I just received some enormous Persian Stars from Gourmet Garlic Gardens: 3 x 2.75 and 3 x 2.5"; those are easily the largest I have encountered. What is the Red Toch flavor like?

In general, mine sized up quite differently from yours. Korean Red was my smallest, averaging 1.56"; my Siberian was average for me my Spanish Roja did better than average (about 2"), and the only one I had over 2" was German Extra Hardy (still averaging under 2.25").

How many bulbs did you grow last year with your 30 varieties? I am going from 225 bulbs of 10 varieties last year to an anticipated 1,200 cloves planted this fall of 23 varieties.

I am not sure how long it is going to take me, but I am slotting two weekends (October 16th and October 23rd) for planting. I am moving to raised beds this year, using three 4' x 32' x 8" beds. If there are any pitfalls in this large a production jump, I would love to hear about them ahead of time.

I grew about 1200 bulbs last year but should be planting close to 2000 this year.
I am planting more of the Red Toch, Romanian, Siberian and Korean red this year as I was really impressed with the size they grew here.
I don't see any problems from upping your production like you mentioned as I have jumped mine up a lot the last 2 years in a row and have had no problems yet, still got a lot to learn but mainly i'm trying differant varieties to see which ones do the best in my area.
Gary

Wow, that's a lot of garlic.
Do you do farmer's markets or do you just like to
eat garlic?
This is my very first year planting garlic.
I'm converting 2 veggie beds and using them.
They are 4'x50'x16"
Tom

We are also increasing. We are going from 280 lbs last year to around 500 lbs this year. We added several varieties last year but are adding no new ones this year.
We will plant 3 varieties of shallots around 30 lbs this fall . I ordered some new shallots from peaceful valley and ordered a little more Music and Metechi to what we had.
This is what we will plant
Spanish roja
persian star
chesnok red
music
metechi
guatemalan
seoul Sister
shantung purple
tuscan
Morado Giagate
Lorz Italian
kettle River
Inchilliam
Elephant

I just got one of my orders today! I got a bulb of each of these:

Inchelium Red
Transylvanian
Silverskin
Red Toch
Asian Tempest
Killarney Red
Morado Gigante
Metechi
Elephant Garlic

I also just ordered some Music and Spanish Roja yesterday. This will be my first year growing garlic and while I don't have a lot of space, I'm psyched to try a bunch of different kinds.

I got my Gourmet Garlic Gardens order a couple days ago, and am generally very happy with my order. It arrived via Priority Mail, and though some of the bulbs had incomplete wrappers, it does not look like the fault lay with the USPS. However GGG compensated by sending over 2.5 lbs of garlic for a 2 lb order.

The Persian Stars were enormous, six bulbs weighing 23 oz. The largest bulb was 4.5 oz. The wrappers were parially off some of the bulbs, and a few cloves were bruised, but the extra weight more than made up for it.

I received Zemo (a second choice to Italian Purple, but I think I am going to prefer it). I got 8 bulbs weighing 18 oz. I was quite pleased with this stock also. Very large cloves, averaging 6 cloves to a 2.25" bulb.

Still waiting on Garlicsmiths and to complete my Filaree order. Details on those later.

K, I was remiss, both Garlicsmith and Filaree part two came in last week.

Garlicsmiths were first  their package arrived via fedex ground and was in mint condition. Both the package and the bulbs were far and away in the best condition of the three farms. Generally they were underweight, while the other two farms all varieties were overweight. Received: full pound of Metechi, half pounds of Russian Giant, Georgian Crystal, French Germinador, and Hokkaido Zai Tai.

Filaree Farms - Received a supplement package from Filaree for the original which had been damaged in shipment. This shipment also was shipped via UPS ground, but arrived in mint condition. The bulbs were generally smallish, but were much more than sufficient to replace the damaged stock. I will be ordering from them again.

Generally, I was happy with all three farms, and would certainly order from any of them next year. I now have plenty of varieties (Martin's Heirloom brings me to an even two-dozen), so I may not order from all three, but would certainly endorse them each. The only variety I know that I am going to try new next year is Brown Saxon from Filaree, but we will see how inspired I get in May.

-John

the only thing i ordered this year was maries special garlic from sandhill preservation, supposed to be 300 small bulbs. i'm assuming they are bulblets. also new are martins heirloom garlic, and a family heirloom garlic from czechoslovakia a local dr received from a nurse at the hospital i work at. the czech garlic was ignored for awhile. the cloves aren't much bigger than bulblets. hopefully i'll have decent size bulbs in 3 years.

keith in calumet

I already have

Chesnok Red
Italian Purple

And I'll be picking up some Spanish Roja at next Thursday at the farmer's market.

I'm pulling out the tomato plants on Monday (this is REALLY late for tomatoes in my mountain side garden), and I'll redo the beds and plant the garlic I have then. I have tried to grow garlic in the past, but my gardens then were in thin, rocky clay soil and I know now that they were not getting enough water or nitrogen, and probably other problems too. Now I have a fabulous garden, fertilized with lots of chicken litter last spring, and I hope things go better.

Catherine

hello i have
german white
romainian
asian tempest
carpaithian
brown rose
korean red
asian purpale
bajatar
chesnook red
thats it for this year,german is my main crop with 150 lbs to go back in,the rest i have just about 20lbs of each to go back in.im starting next week to plant.i hope evryone has a great planting seseon.
frog

Wow, that is a mess-o-garlic. I thought I had my hands full with 25-30 lbs total. Obviously, your must be professional; how do you well your garlic?

Also, I notice that at our quaint Vermont Garlic Festival that German White was the far and away the predominant variety. Why is it so favored by the professionals? I am growing German Extra Hardy; it did very well for me this year. How is German White different?