Growing Garlic

OK, this is great to know - I have one last question: do deer like garlic?

DH went out last night to walk the dog a final time. As he approached the corner of the house at the driveway, he was startled by a very loud exhalation of breath downwind, the opposite the direction he and our dog were traveling.

He was startled to see a large deer standing in the old veggie garden, where I have irises growing now. Usually the old mutt takes off after deer. When it caught sight of him, or caught his scent, it bounded away.

Gave up veggie gardening due to deer, etc. Been under the weather, so there's an even heavier crop of weeds around the irises. Local deer have left the irises be. I presumed the deer was helping weed a bit...

Then I remembered that nearby is where I planted the garlic! Do deer like, or eat, garlic plants? I can see a few hoofprints, but can't tell if they've done any damage.

Deer have never eaten my garlic, though they have walked through the bed, which is annoying and sometimes injures a plant if they step on it.

The straw mulch is both for keeping the weeds down and protecting the soil from compaction by the rain. You could put some down now, but tuck it in around your plants that have sprouted if you can. It doesn't have to be very deep, and i usually keep it pulled back from the plants a little bit.

The plants are still so small, it would be hard to keep it pulled back. Also, I always plant too close! I planted 12 inches apart this year.

uh oh - I planted mine closer than that. how far apart were they supposed to be? I could go back and change it.

I plant mine about 7 inches apart, but they can be a bit closer and still do fine. Partly it depends on how wide your bed is. They can be closer if you have only 2 or 3 rows in a narrow bed and they are getting plenty of sunlight from the sides. Also, some varieties are naturally a smaller plant and can be planted closer together, while others grow much larger and are better off with more space per plant.

phew - I thought I'd messed up.

I don't have any straw so I think I'll add some chipped material I have. That should be easy to keep away from the plants.

I am trying garlic in Earthboxes for the first time this year.

Here is a photo:

And here is some of my in-ground garlic. They were planted earlier than the Earthbox.

Wow! Looking good. I have seen those Earthboxes advertised, but I have not had a look at what they are like all planted up and in use. You in-ground garlic is definitely ahead of mine even though we are in approximately the same zone. Is that a protected micro-climate, by your foundation it looks like?

Yes, you read that right on both counts. It is indeed by the foundation of the house, and it is a nice little micro climate + gets quite a bit of sun (when there is any to get, that is)

Also, bear in mind Chinese Pink is a very early variety. My early varieties (Chinese Pink, Ontario Purple Trillium & Music) are very much ahead of all the others.

This message was edited Jan 24, 2010 5:04 PM

That's right. I had forgotten how quickly those early varieties grow. I had Chinese Pink and Xian, but lost them to a nasty fungus last year. and then your micro-climate makes growth even more rapid.

HI I live in Spokane WA zone 5 I planted some in the fall of 08 but I think it never came
up I think it froze. I would like to try again but I want to plant it now to see if it does better, if any one has any that would like to share with me I would appreciate it very much.

We just planted today. I have never grown Garlic that much but we do love it and will be using plenty. We live in east Texas but Maggi is from Portland. I check out this forum because we are in the same zone and can grow some of the same plants. I will be reading this thread to it's end. Thanks mauryhillfarm for starting this thread.

Welcome Marcia and kenboy. It is always good to have more people growing garlic!

Marcia, I know there are many successful garlic growers in the eastern part of the state, though the planting times are probably different from here in the west, and you probably need to put on a deeper mulch to overwinter them. If you want to plant this Spring, you should choose a softneck variety, as I have heard that the hardnecks do not form a bulb unless planted in the Fall. I have not experimented myself to find out if this is true, but I figured better to be safe and put them in the ground in October. I wish I did have some to offer you, but I don't right now. You could just go to a farmer's market and get some or even many grocery stores now sell decent garlic bulbs that you could plant.

Kenboy, how exciting that you have your crop newly in the ground. It will probably sprout pretty quickly. It will be interesting to compare how your garlic develops compared to the NW region. It could be quite similar, as you say, since we are in the same zone, but there may be some differences because of our long, sometimes chilly Spring weather with more rainfall then garlic would prefer. I don't know anything about the climate in your area, except that likely we have similar zone 8 Winter temperatures. How quickly do you warm up in the Spring, and what are your rainfall patterns? Your garlic might really take off!

I live in Zone 5 a Spokane WA I bought some garlic I am tiring to see if it grows I tried it some years a ago but it didn't work for me. I don't know what soft neck garlic is I am going to do a google search.

OK I am bumping this thread because I want it front and center and I can reread it again. Also my DW wants to read it. We planted on Jan 25 and have harvested everything but the Elephant Garlic. It was a cold and wet Winter for east Texas but the Garlic did very well. It is not as large as we would like but we planted late, so we are happy with the crop. We plan to order several varieties this year and plant at the right time. Thanks to all you PNW gardeners and the good information I have lucked into.

That's great news, kenboy. Welcome to you and and your wife. We like to see people from all over on this forum. Do you have pictures of your garlic garden?

Sorry folks, I kinda dropped the ball on this one, as I was planning to have more pictures as the year went along. My son just graduated from high school this past Saturday, so I have had my mind on other things than the garden (which is woefully weedy except for the garlic bed which I did keep under control for the most part).

Anyway, I did get some pictures from various months. Here is February, with garlic just beginning to put on growth after the coldest part of the Winter:

This message was edited Jun 16, 2010 11:41 AM

April garlic pictured here.

I often do a foliar feed with dilute Alaska fish fertilizer sometime in early April, just to give them a boost, and sometimes give them a second dose later in April as well. You don't want to do this too early, when the new growth might get hit by a freeze, nor do you want to continue foliar feeding too late. After the plants start forming a bulb, they will be putting energy into that rather than more leaf growth. If your soil is healthy, fertile soil, the foliar feed is not really necessary.

May, and weeding once again. I generally keep the weeds down regularly so the area around the garlic plants is not overly moist

Thanks for your ongoing instructions -- I have a very small patch I planted this year and may well expand it next year if all goes well.

Yours is looking very lush, Holly. Mine is much more spindly. Lack of sun I think. I haven't dug down to see if there are bulbs being formed.

My onions are doing great, if you don't count the fact that the tops are beaten down by rain and the slugs are going nuts on the tops. I've pulled up several to use as green onions and the bulbs are getting big and fat. And very tasty. So success with my first time with onion sets. (Once I did red onions from seed and had what I'd call extremely minimal luck with that - low germination rate and very small bulbs on the one or two that made it.)

I'm interested in really increasing the amount of things like garlic and onions for next year. I want to grow mostly what we eat alot of. For us, garlic and onion goes into most everything I cook. So storage quality will be key.

This is a very interesting forum. Thanks all

Someone told me that Garlic green is poisonous..... I don`t think so, but I haven`t tried it either. Anyone have incite on this one.

Deer do not bother Garlic in my experience, except stepping on it of course.

I think the green garlic is just bitter. I've always read not to use it. I always use it. ;)

Have any of you garlic growers ever had pink rot? If not, don't get it!! I have had it ongoing for several years. I think I got it when i used non-treated garlic several years back and now it's in the soil, I think. I usually lose about half my crop to the darn stuff. Then i read that harvesting early helps, so that is what i am doing this year. They are smaller than they usually are, but better than losing so many. And, of course, we have had so much rain and dark days this spring. That could be the reason they are smaller. Don't know. Also, I only grew Oregon Blue as they seem hardier here
. You can tell when the leaves kind of roll back and seem to shrivel. Pull them and the roots are shriveling, too. In really bad cases there are no roots. And, you will see pink tinges in the bulb. Hate it because I love my garlic. Oh, yes, they get mushy, too, and eventually rot.
Even after you have harvested and they are drying, some will get it then, too.

I did get hit by some kind of rot last year. I looked up garlic diseases and decided mine was probably white rot, which is one of the most dread fungi in the garlic industry apparently. It can last in the soil for 20 years. I planted this year's crop in a completely different place, but a number of my plants are looking like they are succumbing again. They appear to grow perfectly normally until the middle of May, at which time the plant starts to yellow and die. The fungus is activated by the garlic starting to bulb and grows most ideally at cool temperatures such as we have been having all Spring. Last year my late varieties were not affected. This year has been so cool so long that I don't know quite what I will end up with. It may be necessary for me to assign a completely separate garlic growing area and, bring in soil, and keep separate tools for that part of the garden.

Mine may be white rot, too. Once i grew garlic in a long green plastic planter with only potting soil and got a pretty good crop. That's why I am pretty sure its in the soil. I love growing garlic, so this is a bummer for me. White rot is supposed to affect onions, too, and it doesn't seem to get my onions, so its probably pink rot. Pink, white, whatever. It's nasty stuff.

I wonder if you could superheat the soil to accelerate the demise of the fungus. Maybe put black plastic over it for a couple of years . . .

I have read about that and forgot all about it. I think it's a good idea. It would be easy to do in my raised beds, too, so guess I will do some research about that and see what comes up. Thanks for the reminder.

Anything is worth trying. I read that in California the big farms are pumping sulpher gas into the soil to activate the fungus when there are no alliums growing there for it to grow on. The fungus is so long lasting in the soil because it forms small (poppy-seed size) sclerotia that can lie in wait for as long as twenty years in the soil. I thought of sprinkling garlic powder in my beds to try to mimic this method. Hopefully, the garlic powder activated the sclerotia when I had nothing growing there that the fungus could feed on. How will I know if it worked though, without the risk of ruining an entire crop of garlic? The tough thing is that I could spend all this time and energy from October through May before I know that it is a failure and the majority of the plants die.

Holly, I'm missing something. How does that (pumping the sulfur gas into the soil to activate the sclerotia) help the soil not be damaging to future fungus? How does it get eradicated - doesn't it just grow more?

As I understand it (though I could be missing something) the white rot fungus only feeds on alliums, particularly the bulbs. Apparently the garlic exudes a sulfur aroma when it starts to form a bulb, and this activates the fungus, which emerges from the sclerotia where it has been encapsulated until the opportune moment (ie: food is available). It is most active at cool temperatures, and may become dormant or die off in the hotter months. I'm not sure about that part of the life cycle. at any rate, by the time it is done feeding off your garlic bulbs, it has formed all the little sclerotia, which remain in the soil even if the parent fungus dies.These are then activated by the sulfur aroma of the newly forming allium bulbs the following Spring, that is if alliums have been planted in that same soil. The idea behind the sulfur gas is that if you cause the sclerotia to become activated when there are in reality no alliums planted there, the newly emerged fungus will have nothing to grow on and will die. I have not read the results of this experiment, to know if it actually worked.

Ah, okay. Thanks for the explanation. So you wake it up and then it starves. That's a great idea.

Let us know if you hear the results of the sulfur treatment, Maury. I hope it works and that they eventually find a treatment for everyone . I read, too, the California garlic fields are so infected that they have to buy new fresh ground to grow it and that now they are growing in Oregon and Wash. too. However, the disease keeps spreading out like a mushroom.
Never compost any parts of garlic that have it, not even the skins. Only buy new treated garlic to plant in the fall. All this makes me sad.

Yeah. What would we do without garlic? I hate to think.

This is off topic, but have any of you seen this bug/beetle in your garden this year?
davesgarden.com/community/forums/t/1109084/
I just posted a plea in the bugs forum about it. I want to know more about it before I take action.

I don't know what it is, but I'm sure they'll let you know soon. They are fast . . .

It is time to take off the garlic 'scapes' which are the immature flower stalks. This year they are maturing a bit later than normal for me. I usually remove them a bit earlier in June. I take a paring knife or kitchen shears out to the garden with a bowl to put the scapes in. They are edible, and can be used in stir-fry vegetables, blended into pesto, or added to other dishes where you would use garlic or onions. I cut them off about an inch above the leaf structure.

The lower leaves of the garlic is beginning to dry down prior to harvest, or it would be doing so a little more effectively without all this rain. It is best for garlic to have tapered off irrigation, stopping altogether 2 or 3 weeks before harvest. I usually begin harvesting just before the 4th of July, so the recent rain has not been particularly helpful.