Growing Your Own Garlic Is Easy!

As far as I'm concerned, garlic gets the blue ribbon for growing your own. It's absurdly easy to plant and care for; it tastes great; it looks beautiful and it takes up so little ground that even those with very small gardens can raise enough to be self-sufficient in garlic for a good part of the year.

All you have to do is choose the right varieties; plant at the right time, in the right soil; then harvest when just right and store correctly.

1. Choosing Types of Garlic

If you look in a specialist catalog like the one at Gourmet Garlic Gardens, you'll find dozens of varieties of garlic listed. The folks at Filaree Farm, who offer a hundred, divide them into seven groups: Rocambole, Purple Stripe, Porcelain, Artichoke, Silverskin, Asiatic Turban and Creole. Gourmet GG says it's 10 groups because they divide Asiatic from Turban and add Marbled Purple Stripe and Glazed Purple Stripe to the list.

You see where this is going – and you can see a lot more types of garlic on either of those websites, but for general purposes the most important difference is the one between softneck and hardneck.

Softnecks are so called because the whole green plant dies down to pliancy, leaving nothing but the bulb and flexible stems that are easy to braid.
Hardnecks have a stiff stem in the center that terminates in a beautiful flower – or cluster of little bulbs – then dries to a rigid stick that makes braiding impossible.

Softnecks, the standard garlics of commerce, are the easiest to grow in regions where the weather is mild. They keep longer than hardnecks, but they are less hardy and more prone to make small, very strong-flavored cloves. Hardnecks do best where there is a real winter and are more vulnerable to splitting – or simply refusing to produce – when grown in warm climates.

Gardeners in most of the U.S. can try some of both. Southerners should probably stick to softnecks and northerners to the hard ones, but microclimates matter. Specialty sellers will suggest best bets based on your climate and tastes, and of course it's wise to get some seed stock from your local farmers' market: whatever it is, it's growing where you are.

Photo: Homegrown garlic, fresh out of the ground. Click the image for recipes that use garlic.

2. Planting Garlic

Growing garlic starts with knowing when to plant it. But planting itself is incredibly easy:

In mid-fall (around October 10 here in the Hudson Valley), plant garlic bulbs in loose, very fertile soil that's as weed-free as possible. Insert cloves root side down about 8 inches apart in all directions (if space is limited, you can squeeze by with 6), burying the tips about two inches down. Green shoots will come up; mulch around them with straw. Hard freeze will come and kill the shoots. Draw the mulch over the whole bed.

In spring, pull the mulch back when the new shoots emerge. Give them a shot of mixed fish emulsion and liquid seaweed. Keep them weeded. Water only if the soil is dry two or more inches down, being sure to avoid pouring water into the crowns of the plants.

3. Cutting Garlic Scapes

Both of us spent most of our gardening lives knowing it was important to cut off the flowering scapes of hardneck garlic so they wouldn't draw energy that should be spent making bulbs. Then I read a story about some garlic growing guru on Long Island who said it didn't matter a whit and he never bothered.

Well, it isn't really much bother; tender young scapes are delicious and older ones that have made pretty curls look wonderful in the vase. But still...

So we set up an experiment, easy because we always plant a long narrow raised bed with two parallel rows. We allotted 30 spaces in each row and planted the same variety – our saved household special – in both of them.

When they were about half grown, no longer super tender but not yet curly and tough, we set about cutting garlic scapes, but only from one row of the plants. At harvest, after trimming,

The cut row yielded: 15 jumbo heads, 14 medium, 1 small, with 9 cracked and 1 half-rotted.

The uncut row yielded 12 jumbo, 16 medium and 2 small, with 3 that were cracked and 1 that was half-cracked.

So, very close to a tie except for one thing: we got 5 pounds out of the cut row, 6.5 pounds out of the one we left alone.

Photo at right: Garlic scapes at the edge of our Maine garden.

Tips for cutting garlic scapes:

1. No harm in taking a few to eat, but don't wait until they're large. Most of the scapes I see for sale are bigger than the four-to-six inches long they should be for best flavor and texture.

2. No harm in cutting some for the vase, either, but don't take them too soon. If you wait until the tops are well developed you'll get, depending on variety, either:

a head of tiny garlic grains that can be used whole and unpeeled in place of minced garlic (for a week or two, after which the skins toughen), or

a clump of small round bulbs, called topsets, that can be stored all winter long and then planted close together in early spring to produce the garlic equivalent of scallions.

Photo: Topsets from the '08 crop, photographed in May '09.

4. Harvesting Garlic

When to harvest garlic depends on the type. Garlic varieties are divided into early, midseason and late, but what that means depends not only on your climate zone but also on your climate in the growing year. Heat speeds 'em up, cold slows 'em down, and although the harvest window is wide if you plan to eat the garlic fresh, it's narrow if you want to ensure maximum storage life.

The bulbs are ready when most of the lower leaves have browned. The upper ones will still be green. If you've ever grown onions, it's easy to assume garlic is the same and you should wait until all the leaves have fallen over. Bad idea. By the time all the leaves are dead the bulbs will have split; they won't have the leaf sheathes they need to form wrappers and it's likely fungus disease will have found a way in.

"Lift the bulbs" is usually used to describe moving things like daffodils, but it's also a good way to think about harvesting garlic. Those heads are more delicate than they seem and any cut or bruise will shorten storage life.

Try to choose an overcast day when the soil is dry. Loosen the soil with a digging fork, inserting it well away from the heads, then lift them out of the row and place them in a flat carrier.

Photo: Garlic plants at optimum harvest stage

5. Curing Garlic

Let the whole plants dry in a single layer somewhere out of the sun where it's warm but not hot. When the outer skin is papery, brush off as much dirt as possible and clip the roots. Rush this a bit if you're braiding garlic stems; if you wait until they're completely dry they tend to crack and break.

The finished garlic will still be on the dirty side compared to anything commercial. We leave it that way until we want to use it because further cleanup can shorten storage life. If you can't bear the way it looks, try removing the outer layer of wrapper. You can wash the bulbs if you must and should be ok as long as they dry quickly and thoroughly, but if you ask me you're asking for trouble by pushing it this way.

Photo: Garlic curing in the warm dry barn.

6. Storing Garlic

How to store garlic? The at-home ideal for storing garlic is between 55 and 70 degrees, with moderate humidity and good air circulation, in the light but out of the sun. We keep our garlic stored in baskets in the cold closet (a.k.a. the inner cold room, an insulated section of the unheated sunporch next to Bill's office). Those less fortunate in the storage department can punt as necessary with good results as long as they avoid the refrigerator (excess cold leads to sprouting) and plastic bags (no air = high humidity = rot).

Source: TheDailyGreen.com

Pesticides and Vegetable Disease Control

Fungicides can be a great help in preventing diseases when properly applied to the plant foliage. Since fungicides are preventive, they should be applied before the disease occurs, or as soon as the first symptoms of disease appear.

Some vegetable diseases require specific fungicides for their control. An outline of diseases of specific vegetables, disease description, suggested cultural and chemical control and comments follows this section.

Fungicides are available primarily as wet-table powders, dry flowables and dusts, but a few are sold as emulsifiable concentrates, flowables and liquids. Wettable powders (WP) and dry flowable (DF) are formulated in such a manner as to be readily suspendable in water. Dusts (D) should not be mixed in water, but applied directly to the plant. Emulsifiable concentrate (EC) fungicides contain an emulsifying agent that makes them readily suspendable in water. Flowable (F) fungicides are finely ground wettable powders that are suspended in a liquid.

Some soil fungicides are available as granules and are applied in the furrow at planting. Dust and spray fungicides may also be used as in furrow treatments for seedling disease control.

Never attempt to use dust formulations of fungicides in spray solutions. Dusts will not suspend in the spray solution. Wettable powder formulations may appear similar to dusts, but they are formulated to be suspended in spray solutions. Foliar sprays will aid in controlling leaf spots, rusts, mildews, anthracnose and fruit rots. Foliar sprays are not effective against vascular wilts or root rots. Foliar sprays are protectants, because they form a protective layer of fungicide over the surface of the fruit and foliage. Disease agents (bacteria and fungi) that land on these fungicide-coated surfaces are killed or prevented from infecting the plant.

Most fungicides are not effective in inhibiting disease organisms once they have infected a plant. It is imperative that foliar fungicides be applied prior to infection of the plant. A spray schedule should be followed that maintains a protective fungicide layer on the foliage and fruit during favorable infection periods. By carefully monitoring their vegetables, some gardeners can usually delay the first fungicide application until the first sign of disease. Then a 7-14 day spray schedule should be followed. During rainy or humid weather, spray application intervals should be shortened.

Proper pesticide mixing and spraying plays a very important part in achieving disease control. Most home gardeners will find a 1-2 gallon compressed-air sprayer adequate for applying foliar sprays. A nozzle with a cone pattern will provide the most effective coverage of plant foliage. Keep the pressure up to insure small spray particle size and good coverage.

Sprayers should be cleaned and rinsed after each use. Hose-end sprayers are not very effective in applying fungicides to vegetables. Never use the same sprayer for fungicides and insecticides that has been used for herbicides. Residues of certain types of herbicides are very difficult to remove from sprayers. These residues may cause crop injury if a herbicide-contaminated sprayer is used in applying fungicides or insecticides.

A Beginner's Guide to Organic Gardening

Gardening is not too complex. Almost all of us—probably in grade school—planted a seed in a cup of dirt, watered it, and watched it grow. But creating a garden that produces fresh food and flowers all season is not so elementary, especially to those who did not grow up gardening. 

So we've compiled this guide to the basics of organic gardening and the keys to success we've learned over the years. When you're done reading, look at your thumb—you may see a tint of green that wasn't there before.

Planting Seeds

1. Make your bed. About three weeks before you are ready to plant, after the soil has dried so that it doesn't clump when you pick up a fistful, sink a fork into the earth. Loosen it down to about 12 inches, add a half-inch layer of compost, and rake the surface of your garden until it has no weeds, dirt clumps, or big stones. Over the next three weeks, pull any weeds that come up. Raking and then letting the soil sit for a few weeks brings out weed seeds that were lurking in the soil.

2. Dig a furrow—or not. If you like symmetry and order, carve out a shallow trench with a hoe or hand trowel. But you don't have to plant in rows. You can organize your garden as a grid, with plants at the four corners of each square, or you can choose not to organize it at all. Whichever style you go with, dig shallow furrows or holes for the seeds.

3. Water lightly. Moisten but don't soak the soil. Watering before rather than after planting the seeds protects them from being swamped, or washed up and out of the soil.

4. Sow the seeds. Spread the seeds through the trench or place two or three in each planting hole. The seed packet tells you how far apart to plant them. If you plant too closely, you can thin them after they come up and, in many cases, eat the thinnings.

5. Cover with soil. As a rule of thumb, bury seeds only about as deep as their diameter. Sprinkle soil on top of the seeds, pressing gently to ensure they have contact with the soil. A few seeds, such as lettuce and dill, need light to sprout, so cover them sparingly. (Seed packets tell you if they need light to germinate.)

6. Keep moist. Sprinkle water on the seedbed whenever the surface is dry until all the seeds have sprouted.

Key to success: Add compost to planting holes to improve the soil's structure, provide slow-release nutrients, and activate the beneficial microbes in the soil.

Six Essential Tools

• Trowel
• Hand-weeding tool
• Hoe
• Pruners
• Fork
• Spade

Transplanting:

These steps apply to vegetables you get in packs at the garden center, as well as annual and perennial flowers. 

1. Dig a hole. Make the planting hole as deep as the plant's container and about double the diameter. 

2. Water the plant. Give it a drink before planting, because until the roots start growing, they can't draw water from the soil. 

3. Remove the plant from the pot. Place your hand on top of the pot, with your fingers around the plant's stem. Turn the pot upside down and gently squeeze it or push the plant out from the bottom with your other hand. If you must tug it out, pull it by its leaves rather than the stem (if a leaf comes off, no harm done; damage the stem, and the plant will not survive). 

4. Check the roots. If the roots have wrapped around and around the plant, gently pull a few loose with your fingers. 

5. Place it in the hole. Set the plant in the hole at the same depth it was in its pot, generally where the stem meets the roots. Tomatoes are an exception to this rule—plant them deeper. 

 6. Replace soil and then water. Backfill the hole with the soil you removed and press gently to ensure that the roots have solid contact with the soil. Be sure the soil stays consistently moist until you see the plant start to grow. 

Key to success: Transplant on an overcast day to give the plants a chance to adjust to their new home without being withered by direct sun.

Managing Weeds:

Weeds siphon water and nutrients away from your garden w, they can harbor pests, and they sure can make your garden look a mess. But you don't need to spray toxic herbicides, which are harmful to people, pets, and wildlife, to keep plant invaders out of your organic garden. Use these strategies instead.

Mulch. Keep your soil covered at all times to prevent light from reaching weed seeds. Spread a thick layer (2 or more inches deep) of organic mulch—straw, dried grass clippings, shredded leaves—on your garden each spring and replenish it throughout the growing season. Bonus: The mulch nourishes your soil as it decomposes. For even better weed protection, use several sheets of newspaper, kraft paper (such as grocery bags), or cardboard under these mulches. They are nearly impenetrable by weeds.

Hand-pull. Sounds like a lot of work, we know. But pulling out a few weeds every day or at least every week keeps them from getting out of control and brings you up close to your garden so you can inspect your plants for problems. Keep a bale of straw or a pile of grass clippings on hand so you'll have mulch on demand to help prevent weeds from returning after you've pulled them.

Hoe. Use a hoe's sharp edge to sever weed stems from their roots just below the soil surface. Forget about the square-headed traditional garden hoe for this job—get a stirrup-shaped oscillating or a swan-neck hoe instead. To hoe your garden without cultivating a backache, hold the hoe as you would a broom.

Spread corn. You can suppress the growth of weed seeds early in the season by spreading corn-gluten meal. This works best in established lawns. Corn-gluten meal, a by-product of corn processing that is safe for people, pets, and wildlife, inhibits the germination of seeds and fertilizes at the same time. Bear in mind, once the weeds have grown beyond the sprout stage, corn gluten does not affect them. Also, corn gluten doesn't discriminate between seeds you want to sprout and those you don't want, so avoid using corn-gluten meal where and when you've sown seeds.

Solarize. Where you have a persistent weed problem or you need to clear a thick mat of weeds from a brand-new bed, enlist the sun's help. In late spring or early summer, pull, hoe, or rake out as many weeds as you can from the bed. Then moisten the soil and cover it with a tight layer of clear plastic, weighting or burying the edges. Leave the plastic in place for six weeks so the sun cooks any remaining weed seeds.

Be persistent. This is your most important long-range weapon against weeds. Mulch, and pull or hoe the weeds for a few minutes whenever you visit your garden. Do these things consistently for a few seasons, and you will slowly but surely expel problem invaders for good.

Key to success: Weeds come out easily when the soil is moist, so think of a summer rainstorm as an opportunity to free your garden from a weed infestation.

Use This.....................Not That
Fish and seaweed fertilizer..Miracle-Gro
Insecticidal soap............Sevin
Clove oil herbicide..........Roundup
Compost......................Bagged synthetic fertilizer

Controlling Pests:

Whenever you see insects in your garden, remember this: Most are no threat to plants, many are even beneficial, and all of them, even the pests that eat your plants, are an integral part of the ecosystem you are cultivating. But what do you do when the pests seem to have the upper hand? You don't want to enforce a "no-fly zone" with pesticides. They're dangerous for you to have and to use, and they harm wildlife and contaminate water. Instead, use safe, organic techniques and products to keep the pests in balance.

Grow healthy plants. The best defenses against insect attack are preventive measures. Pests target weak or unhealthy plants, so choose plants that are suited to the conditions you are putting them in and they'll be less stressed. Don't let plants be too wet, too dry, or too shaded. Use lots of compost, but be sparing with high-nitrogen fertilizers, if you must use them at all.

Integrate, don't segregate. Mix different vegetables, herbs, and flowers together in your beds. This keeps pests from zeroing in on a whole crop of their target plant.

Encourage Pests' Predators. The most effective and natural way to control pests is to rely on the food chain. Plant herbs and flowers among your vegetables to lure predatory insects such as ladybugs and green lacewings, which feed on flowers' nectar while their larvae consume pests. Put out a birdbath to enlist the appetites of songbirds to your cause. Treat toads, lizards, and garter snakes as welcome allies, too.

Build Barriers. Row cover is a woven fabric that lets light, air, and water reach plants, but keeps pests (including deer) away from them. You'll find it in local garden centers, in catalogs, and online. The best-known brand is Reemay.

Target The Treatment. When prevention is no match for infestation, take the time to choose the right organic tool to solve your problem. Start by making sure you have correctly identified the pest and confirmed it is the cause of the symptoms you've found. Consult your local Cooperative Extension office (csrees.usda.gov) if you need help. 

Then, depending on the pest, you can arm yourself with soap or hot-pepper sprays, horticultural oil, or Bacillus thuringiensis, a naturally occurring bacterium that disrupts the digestion of caterpillars and other leaf-eaters.

Surrender. As we said, insects attack plants under stress. Do you have enough healthy plants to spare the sickly ones? Can you restore sickly plants to robust health so they can resist insect attack? If not, let the pests do their worst, then watch as their predators flock to your garden and protect your healthy plants.

Key To Success: Check the undersides of leaves when applying organic pest control—insects often hide out of sight.

Source of Article: http://www.organicgardening.com/