I want to try to grow some elephant garlic. Every where I went today they are sold out.
Do any of you grow garlic?
Lavina
Is garlic a veg?
Try the grocery stores and farmers market.
Publixs has it
Ditto, try the grocer store and farmers' markets for a local source.
Usually in September or so the grocery store prices on garlic drop and that's a good time to buy. Lavina, you can plant your regular garlic as late as Thanksgiving in your area. As for elephant garlic you could plant it now (if you find some) and I'd recommend putting it where it can become a perennial patch, it'll grow for years.
Shoe
Shoe please explain the perennial part. I have just grown grocery store garlic for the past 2 years and the whole thing gets harvested. How does elephant garlic grow differently?
Howdy, Twiggy...
Elephant garlic sometimes won't bulb into cloves like real garlic does. When it doesn't make cloves it just grows what is called a "round". If those rounds are left alone (not harvested or are replanted) they will then continue growing and turn into bulbs w/cloves when they flower (flowering in their second year). This "garlic" (actually a leek) will alternate between making cloves and rounds. Being a perennial (even though it flowers in its second year like a biennial) it also will continue its growth by having bulblets that grow on the outside/around the cloves (the year it produces cloves).
I never knew this until about ten years ago when I was plowing a neighbors garden and saw this nice elephant garlic growing up next to her old out-building. The neighbor was 60-something at the time and told me her mother planted that bed when she was a little girl. (That reminds me, I better go take her a dozen fresh eggs and start up a conversation about elephant garlic...maybe I can come home with a few, eh?)
Shoe
I think you just solved a mystery for me. I had some of those rounds, an occasional 3/4" round that I thought looked like a small onion but tasted like mild garlic. I thought I had some kind of mutant. I don't remember specifically planting elephant garlic but I bet that's what it was.
I remembered you posting somewhere that it was best to pick out the biggest cloves for planting. I picked out the heftiest bulbs I could find at the store and kept them in the fridge for several weeks. When I got ready to plant I mixed in some garlic I had on the counter from another source.
Thanks shoe. Now I'll have to see if I can get my forever garlic started, separately this time.
"Forever garlic"...that's a great way to put it. Kinda even sounds like a song, doesn't it! Love it!
Shoe
Shoe...ya really gotta get out more!
Hah! Yep, Sequee, I agree! (I ain't right, am I?) *grin
Maybe I can get out more and on to NY, bringing ya'll po' Northern folks some fresh tomatoes. You and Carolyn will be first on my list. I feel for ya!
Best!
Shoe
Shoe, maybe you ought to get out and come to the KY Roundup next month. Remember we still have a standing bet on the tastiest smoked BBQ!!!
Doug
Howdy, Dug/Doug...
I can't think of a better place I'd like to be next month. I've missed it for five years now (I think). If anyone ever has a goal to meet it should be the KY Roundup.
Unfortunately it doesn't look like I'll make it. Bummer. :>(
Now about that tastiest smoked BBQ...maybe I can Fed Ex some over there and put ya to shame, eh? Nyah nyah! *grin
Shoe
You send it I'll try it! But it has to be via Express Mail not FedEx!!! I've had that NC BBQ before. I was down there in the late 70's early 80's in the USMC. It was very tasty.
Doug
Whoops! Didn't mean to say a bad word! (i.e., FedEx!) You're right, gotta be Express Mail, PostManDug! I forgot, forgive me!
As for Carolina BBQ and also the Marines, Semper fi!
Shoe
Let's see.... if I can remember my school days, I was taught things are either animal, vegetable or mineral - so that would make garlic a vegetable! (just kidding)
I set my garlic cloves about six inches apart - I don't actually measure the distance, I just assume my hand trowl is about twelve inches long, so I set them roughly half way tip-to-tip.
Shoe were you a Marine?lol I live accross the river from the Cherry Point landing field. Can I say Noise.
I can't find elephant garlic anywhere down here. But I am gonna start something. I tried to order and everthing says sold out right now.
Leeks have garlic?
Lavina