Garlic Update - 2nd year for Martin Heirlooms, 1st year for Music

This year I got Music Garlic planted, and Martin Heirlooms.  This is the 2nd year for the martin heirlooms.  These cloves are about 2/3rds the size of normal cloves on the larger blub sizes.  The music garlic on the other hand is looking really nice.

These are the martin heirloom bulbs.  Note i have tons of cloves, and
am only keeping 10 of the biggest cloves so if anyone else is
interested let me know :) (before next year)

I'm going to run a test to see if i can pull the cloves out of the garlic heads and they can still last til september/october for planting.  So i'm pulling apart 2 heads.

Here's pics of the latest.  I'll update this thread later this year or next when i know how they grow.

I'm also hoping to plant these ones close together so i can see if they're smaller on average.  If they're the same basic size this means that i can pull the largest cloves each year and they don't have to hang there for months.

The cloves were about the same size, which
is good, but the heirlooms hopefully will get
bigger this next year.  They also hold more
cloves, 5 for music, 7 for MH

Notice how much larger the music cloves are on the left, vs the younger heirlooms on the right.  Hopefully next year they'll both be the same size :)

Update - Seeds, Garlic, and mint tea

Well, it's been an eventful summer here on my little garden.  The Zucchini I tried I put out too early and it got bitten, and hasn't done well at all.  I'm ready to pull it out when the next flower just drops off.

I ate my first 12in long bean, which was probably a bit early even for it, these things are supposed to get really long.

I picked out all my garlic, let me see if I have a picture somewhere:

I can't stress how helpful these greenhouse posts have been.  They're perfect for hanging the garlic to dry, and also nice for reaching the middle of my raised beds without stepping on the dirt.  Very very awesome.  Notice the garlic bulbs are a little sad, but still it's the first year i've ever tried it, and I put them in late.  Hopefully this years will be better :).

I got out several multiplier onions, all ranging from about ping pong ball to a small baseball size.  Looking forward to putting the ones that last the winter back in in the spring.  A few that came from seed have grown, a couple that look pretty nice, i'll try and grow them all next year to see if any of them are promising.

The lettuce has finally gone to seed, and i've gotten about 200 black seeded simpson seeds so far from 1 plant, we'll see how many i get total, it's not slowing down.  I also got about 100 romaine lettuce seeds, we'll see if they mix at all.  I'm going to plant them pretty soon when I get the zucchini out.

I planted some new kale seeds in the front where there's a lot of shade, we'll see how they do in the summer.  I was planning on planting another plant or so every week to see when the best time to plant kale is in my yard, I'm hoping to get as much kale as possible :).  I'll keep this updated with pictures and all that in it's very own post as things progress

I got some more basil and cilantro planted out in the front yard.  The mint in the front yard is growing well, and one of them isn't, it's odd.  But today I picked some mint, about 5 or 6 sprigs, and boiled them in a few cups of water to have my first herbal tea from the mint.  It's pretty good stuff, with just a little honey.

I'll keep everyone updated with images and all that, but it's been a while since my last post.

Garlic Scapes :) and Garlic flowers

My Martin's Heirloom Garlic bulbils have been growing really well, and pretty much all of them have scapes (well, they did until I cut them all off and attempted to make garlic scape pesto).

I've been reading up how to get garlic to go to seed (not a normal process, normally they go to bulbils or whatever it's called).  I decided to take a few pictures of the process.

One of the things that I've found is that scapes are smaller than i thought, they're a little bigger than a spagetti noodle, but not much.  The heads at the end are about the size of an eraser when I pulled off the outer protecting and began pulling the bulbils out 1 by 1.  It's a hard process, especially with the mosquitoes, and often ends up in a few of the flower heads falling off.  But in the end the bulbils are plucked out and the flowers are left so that they can grow and become seeds.  I'm hopeful that they'll get better and better about going to flower so that i won't have to pull the bulbils out as much.

Anyway, here are the pictures:

Here you can see the scapes on all the garlic.  Note that
because they're bulbils i've been able to place them very very close together.

This is what it looks like before I start pulling
off the bulbils.  I have to cut through the outer
protective layer, and then pluck off the bulbils
one by one.

See how small those little flower buds are?  it's difficult to remove the
bulbils without pinching out the flowers as well.

This is the finished product.  There might be 1 or 2 bulbils deep in
there, hopefully some of the flowers still go to seed.

All in all it takes me about 5 minutes or so a garlic scape.  I've done about 9 of these, and I left on 4 or 5 to grow to bulbils and the rest I cut off to make pesto out of.  It's been a fun little project.

Planting Martin's garlic bulbils

I've gone slightly crazy since i first started learning about garlic.  I've found a variety called Martin's Heirloom Garlic, and it seems pretty exciting.  The bulbs are some of the largest ones, and the bulbils themselves are the largest i've seen.

How do bulbils work?
A bulbil is kind of like a seed for garlic.  It's not true seed, I might talk about true seeds later as I try to get garlic to grow some, it's a cumbersome process but will allow me to "breed" my own personal garlic type.  But bulbils are exact copies of the parent, so they will grow to be the same basic garlic bulb.  The only difference between cloves and bulbils is that bulbils can take 3 years to grow properly.  Well this is year one :).  Martin's are said to only require 2 years to grow, so that's exciting.

Here's a picture of some of the bulbils I got in the mail today (planting tomorrow)

They're like large corn kernels.  Very nice, i'm excited to see how they do, and I'll keep you guys up to date.

Why would you want to grow from bulbils?
If bulbils take 2 or 3  years to grow, and cloves only take 1 year, why would you want to do bulbils?  From most hard neck garlic you get anywhere from 4 to sometimes as many as 12 cloves.  On the other hand, if you let them go to "seed" and grow bulbils, you can get the same 4 to 12 cloves (though depending on the type they'll be smaller) and you also can get 15, 30, or sometimes as much as 100 bulbils.  Honestly though, to me the main reason to do bulbils is because they're way way cheaper to start :), and that's a great way to start into something you're not yet sure you'll be good at.

I'll add another picture when I get them planted, and hopefully a few throughout the season as they grow, and definitely pictures at the end of the season to show what the harvest is like :).


UPDATE Saturday Dec 1, 2012

I got them planted, they took up almost 4ft x 4ft.  I planted several bulbils inside under my grow lights, these will take the place of any that may die in the ground this year.  If all of them make it :) then i guess i'll take room from somewhere else :).

Here's some pictures of the finished product.

This is where my peas were last year, we'll be planting them in the rows this year that my wife is planning on working in.  Note the "tool" that i'm using here.  It's a dowel that I have measured out nicely to help with planting plants that need 8in, 2in, or 16in spacing.  It also happens to be the right size to fit martin's bulbils in.  I found it much easier to poke all the holes at once rather than one at a time.

I'll take more pictures as the garlic grows.

New pictures :).  These are the ones I planted in doors.  Here's the data:

11-30-12: Planted 36 Martin's Garlic indoors

12-10-12 (10 days): First martin sprouted

12-12-12 (12 days): 2nd and 3rd sprouted

12-14-12 (14 days): 4th and 5th sprouted.

Here are pictures as of 12-14-12:

A little blurry, these are #2 on the
left, and #1 on the right.

About 2 or so inches tall

They're doing pretty good so far, we'll see how it goes.

Learning about / and Planting Garlic and Shallots

Well this year hasn't really gone as planned.  Turns out i'm about as lazy as I thought i'd be :).  However, I've learned quite a bit about gardening.  First and foremost saving seeds, if you're lazy, is actually very easy :).  For the most part all I have to do is not do anything, until the seed pods turn all brown and die.  It's very easy.  I've saved Coriander (cilantro), Basil, and Peas, all of which were easy and fun to do (and my kids loved helping).

So the season is over right?  Well, not exactly.  It's time to plant your shallots and garlic.  Garlic planting is one of those that you plant early in the winter, as close to the last frost as possible, though this date varies depending on where you look, next year I'll let you know if Nov. 10th was the right date next summer :).  Garlic will get roots before it freezes too much, and the deeper freeze will tell the clove that it's time to multiply.  This will make for a better head next year.  Shallots, which are in the same basic family as onions and garlic, work very much the same way.

My Crop this Year
So i planted out about 50 or 60 garlic plants in a 4ft x 4ft area in my garden, which should be replaced by a fall crop next summer.  I also ordered some hard neck garlic (doesn't store as well, but is supposed to taste better) from ebay, we'll see how it works out.  Ideally with garlic, after your first year you shouldn't need to buy seed again unless you get a soil disease or something.  So possibly I'll be able to give garlic seeds to anyone in the area next year if they're interested.  I'll be planting the garlic, and the shallots I just bought on ebay, as soon as they arrive.

Seeding Garlic
Although for the most part garlic is planted by growing cloves, there's another way to do it which is very much like letting the plants go to seed.  The garlic will create a large pod which will contain several small garlic cloves, called bulbils.  These bulbils have the added benefit of not having soil born diseases, so saving some of these each year increases your chances of never losing your crop entirely.  But what's the drawback?  Bulbils take 2-3 years to grow :).  The 1st year they'll grow into 1 or 2 cloves, then several small cloves, and then finally they'll be full grown.

So why grow bulbils at all?  There's really not a reason not to.  If you leave 1 in 5 of your garlic to go to seed, you can still eat the left over bulb, though some people say that they can be smaller than normal.  You can also eat the bulbils as small garlic cloves if you really want to.  They really are just small cloves, and will likely taste the same.  So growing bulbils is a way to further your crop, so why not :).

Evidently Shallots aren't as nice, and unless you get the right variety they don't grow bulbils or seed at all.  So for now, shallots will be from "cloves" each year.  Though they multiply so they should keep for years to come.  And since they're so expensive at the store :) it's worth the investment.


UPDATE 12-8-2012
Rather than adding a new post, i figured i'd just update this one throughout the year with how things are going, though I imagine when I get pictures that'll change :).

I just bought 3oz of Music Garlic cloves off ebay, got them today, and planted out.  Turned out being 30 cloves, so i have 5 rows of 6, they're 8 inches apart.  I'm really looking forward to these, i've read many posts that say this taste the best and are great for roasting and spreading on bread.