Grey Duck Garlic
Garlic Report 2010/2011
Our year of growing garlic starts in the fall with planting. After the harvested garlic cures we clove and plant garlic. We plant garlic in October.
Left: A box of Red Rezan cloves ready to plant. Typically we plant in October and November.
Since Red Rezan is a new variety for us we saved and planted all the cloves.
When planting cloves make sure that the tip is facing up in the hole or the bulbs will be deformed. Not sure which end is up? See our planting organic garlic page for pictures of proper planting technique.
Normally we sort our garlic into uniform large sizes for planting or selling. That way all the garlic in one bed is ready to harvest at the same time and we have super big bulbs in the fall.
Right: In November Susan mulches fall planted garlic.
Mulch protects garlic from winter cold and also helps keep down spring weeds.
We have used straw and compost for mulch. This year we are using compost. Mulching helps protect the plants from winter chill and summer heat. We recommend mulching your garlic to help increase bulb size as well.
Left: What are Steve and Annabel building?
Find out the answer at Garlic Building Projects.
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Above right: Our spring pea cover crop is coming up.
Below: April hail brings ...
April snows (we were really hoping for May flowers) and more rain.
But the garlic keeps growing through all the bad weather. It is a hardy crop and an excellent choice for areas with unpredictable weather.
Below left: May garlic growing across the field. Below right: raindrops on garlic leaves.
The garlic is really thriving and has doubled in size in the first two weeks of May! It could be growing so well because we finally had temperatures higher than 60ºF here.
Below: Patty weeding our spring garlic.
For some great weeding tips see sustainable garlic growing.
Common Garlic Question: Why do my garlic leaves have yellow tips?
Yellow tips can be due to a nitrogen or sulfur deficiency BUT often they are due to heavy frost.
The pictures below show our 2011 Siberian garlic with yellow tips due to a late heavy frost of 20ºF in May. Slight frosts of 28ºF had no effect. The yellow discoloration occurred right after the heavy frost. Other garlic varieties did not develop the yellow tips and seem to be more resistant to cold. We have not noticed any ill effects of yellow tips in garlic on bulb size or garlic growth. For more answers to common garlic growing problems see Garlic Questions or How to Grow Big Garlic.
Below: Siberian garlic develops yellow leaf tips after hard frost in May.
We have broken all records for high rainfall here in the Palouse in 2011. For you of you in the East coast or South who are probably envisioning a deluge of rain; our new record is 6 inches of precipitation since March (10 inches since January). This area has not received this much spring rain in recorded history.
Grey Duck Garlic grows dryland garlic here and does not irrigate (even in normal years), so you can tell that garlic grows well under pretty low rainfall.
Left: Nate runs through the rows of early June garlic. The garlic is getting really tall.
July: We have been scaping our garlic.
Mid-July: We are starting to harvest some of our test plot garlic. Our garlic in the field is still not ready to harvest.
We grow all new garlic in a separate field from our regular crop for a few years to evaluated the garlic. Susan and Jane look at cultural factors and Susan and Edna check out the culinary qualities. We were pretty happy with most of our new varieties.
Late July below: Susan kick starts the harvest with a few of our test garlic varieties. We have not selected for size in our new varieties yet.
August: We finally have our reward for lots of fun hard work: a bountiful garlic harvest. Our garlic is really big and colorful this year.
Right: Ollie holds some of our early Thermadrone crop.
We had a great crop this year. So far the biggest garlic has weighed 5.9 oz! We are aiming for a 6 oz garlic bulb.
Right now we are planting garlic. I always save extra garlic to make sure I have enough to plant.
Want to know how this story ends? Check out our garlic growing guide or growing great big garlic for tips on growing garlic.
