Hello all,

We're planning to start some garlic this fall in our Anchorage, Alaska garden. We tried last year, but put off planting until too late and, before we knew it, ground freeze. Nonetheless our spring-planted bulbs seem to like our planting location.

We're looking for advice from anyone growing garlic in colder climates (zone 2/3). In our neighborhood we have winters with colder temps (teens to zeros F, typically, with stretches of 10s below with more rare, brief periods to 30s below at night). Past few winters have been more mild though. Spring and early summer are very dry and fairly warm, but mid-late summer and fall are cool with prolonged stretches of drippy wet weather.

We use 8" raised beds for many of our annual vegetables and herbs, to keep soil warm and hold them above the mucky wet soil. However, I'm concerned that raised beds will expose overwintering garlic to cold that will kill it. Has anyone grown garlic in raised beds in the cold? Suggestions/alternatives?

I'd also like to hear what varieties anyone has had success with in this type of climate.

Thanks,

Mike Rehberg

John, your first mention of several dozen Chesnok Red bulbils threw me for a moment. For certain, they produce more than several dozen. Even 50 may be a very conservative estimate. Possibly more like 75-100. They are about the same size as Music, the one which I'm experimenting with and that's in the 75-100 bulbil range.

I think that planting time could be any time. My Music bulbils were planted about the same time as the regular clove planting. No sign of life appeared until just before freeeze-up and then not very many. Wasn't until spring when the area suddenly looked like garlic sod. I hadn't planted them in any particular pattern but merely tried to broadcast them at about an inch spacing. Then sifted about a half inch of soil over them so as to keep that spacing. Since I didn't count how many were planted, I've no idea what the survival rate was. I didn't note any major gaps or bare spots so I'm assuming that it was close to 100% survival.

At this point, I've got marble-sized rounds. I'm not certain if they are big enough to become divided bulbs or not. I'll be planting most back at about 3" spacing as I almost suspect that they'll only become larger rounds. At the same time, I'll isolate a few at 6" spacing just in case they may indeed may reach normal mature size.

Martin

So, the bulbils may be a three-year proposition rather than two. That is the down side. The upside is that I stand to harvest between 50 and 100 bulbs of garlic all started from a single clove 3-4 years earlier. (Though, come to think about it, I would harvest 216 bulbs if I were to simply plant six cloves from every bulb harvested for three years). It still sounds like an experiment worth doing. I will go for the inch spacing in an out of the way place.

I have five or six scapes to work with of 2 or 3 varieties with the huge number of bulbils. I also have about 3 scapes from my Korean Red which only yielded fewer than a dozen bulbils per scape. It will be interesting to see if those larger KR bulbils yield full size bulbs in two years while the smaller, more plentiful ones take three.

mrehberg,

Probably should have just started your own thread, but...

Try Siberian. I have grown it in zone 5 just fine, but from what I hear it get's it's name from where it is from so if you mulch it well after the first solid freeze it should do fine.

It forms fairly large heads/cloves (some cloves didn't fit into my garlic press) and has a moderately sharp taste. Very good, overall.

My son insisted he grow some bulbils last fall, and rather than discourage him, I helped him (he's 12). Surprisingly, they produced multiple clove heads, though not quite as large as the "adults". We use lots of composted horse manure and bone meal. We used the large bulbils from the old Rocambole i've had for years.

Saying in Lithuania: "If it's good, it must be good with garlic"

Happy Planting
Maryanne in WMass

This is a follow-up report on the Music bulbils mentioned above. I planted back a number of those marble-sized rounds on 30 September. This time, they didn't waste any time in beginning their second growth period. It was simply plant, one good rain shower, and many were up within 10 days. I still don't think that they will be big enough to produce a divided bulb next year unless the growth rate is now very rapid. That could be the case since those rounds are larger than most of the largest bulbils of other varieties.

Within the next few days, I'll work up an area for planting bulbils from those varieties which have the large ones. The plan is to space those also at 3" or less. The idea will be to have them crowded a bit and forced to grow into only large rounds. When those in turn are planted back in 2006, they should produce monster bulbs for 2007.

Martin

Two additional weeks of the Music growth has me thinking differently. At this point, growth from the small rounds is equal to that of large cloves planted in the same bed. If one did not know which were which, one would think that all were started from cloves. All are producing multiple leaves and thus quite probably on their way to becoming divided bulbs.

Music bulbils are the only small ones that I plan to experiment with. Some larger types will be started in flats and pots for eventual transplanting in the spring. I need to find out how deep the pots must be to avoid shocking the plant into dormancy.

Martin