Contact me through My Page, I may be able to help you out.

Steve

Your best bet is local growers and farmers. That way you can talk to them personally, share a few ideas or ask them their opinion about particular varieties.

Your best bet is local growers and farmers. That way you can talk to them personally, share a few ideas or ask them their opinion about particular varieties.

I have an 8x12 bed set up for fall planting, and I will fill it with grocery store garlic if that's what I have to do, but I would really rather try out a bunch of other garlics if I can.
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8 x 12= 96 sq-ft.
If you plant 4 garlics per sq-ft , it will be close to 400 garlics.(That should yield over 50 lbs of garlic)
Since you should only use just the outer big clove for planting(say 8 per bulb) , you will need to have about 50 garlics. If 6 garlic weigh ONE pound, you will need roughly 8 ponds of seed garlic.
If you plant 4 varieties, you will need TWO ponds of each.

BTW: i have planted Sore-Boughts 3 seasons. I like the hardnecks better, Nothing wrong with that.

I did check around with local growers.. Problem is, there are NO local growers of garlic. I apparently live in fruit and squash land. I have 30-45 growers around me, and not a one of them does garlic.. I was fairly surprised by that.

And thanks oober much for the planting advice! I was just going to try rows, hadn't even thought about square foot growing. But that really gives me a good idea on just how much I can plant in that space!

Thanks folks :)

Most supermarket garlic, like 75+%, comes from China, and much of it is treated to prevent sprouting. I have planted it successfully in the past, but also had it die over the winter one year. Best to plant a hardneck garlic grown locally, or from an Internet site.

Most large hardnecks have fewer, fatter cloves than the supermarket artichoke types. I assume six plantable cloves per bulb and eat the smaller ones. For the largest bulbs, spacing should be 6" within a row, and 12" between rows, and cover with a thick loose mulch. Plant in full sun for best results and give them a high nitrogen fertilizer at planting, and again in early March, April, and May to promote healthy top growth - then stop to allow bulb development.

Plenty of more detailed growing instructions are available on the Internet.

TomVA

I've always grown my garlic at 6"x6" spacing with good results. As an experiment this year I increased the amount of space between plants and when harvested there was no noticeable increase in bulb size. In fact, my yield was lower due to the increased spacing. However, this is just my experience from a one year experiment.

As for garlic being from China, just look at the roots. Chinese garlic, by law, has it's roots scooped out whereas garlic grown in the U.S. has it's roots still attached. Below is a link showing the difference, just scroll down the page to the pics.

Rodney

Here is a link that might be useful: How To Recognize Chinese Garlic

theforgottenone explained a good point about chinese garlic.
They are mostly softnecks. I like hardnecks better.
If you are concerned about sprouting , due to chemical treatment, get some organic ones from Whole Foods . They are a bit more expensive but then carry some insurance policy.

This post was edited by seysonn on Sat, Sep 7, 13 at 9:46