My 'sterile' chinese garlic

doctor evil

Hallo all

Towards the end of May I planted a clove of garlic alongside my tomatoes, the garlic was from the supermarket and I just thought, why not.

It turns out the garlic is not sterile and has been growing well, it is against the wall in the back which gets the sun.

Why question is when should I harvest it and do I dry it out like onions?

My Rooster spud also grew well. This was a spud that rolled away and started to chit. I was late planting it but I got 2/3 big spuds and lots of baby ones. Could I use the baby ones as potatoe seeds for March? I did not get any blight and they will planted in a different section this time.

Thanks:)

(I love the fact that they both grew as I was mocked by naysayers that they would be sterile, I wonder if they would like their words boiled or mashed?)

Planet X

According to the literature I got from The Garlic Farm when I bought my recent garlic bulbs is that you should harvest when the leaves START to wither. A 10% withering is when you should pull them up. Dry them for a fortnight. Don't see how you can do that in this weather though.
You should be planting garlic at this time of the year, first frost time. My crop, about 70 cloves will be ready next June/ July time. Planted a fortnight ago.

magicbastarder

i don't think i've ever had a problem getting garlic to grow.
however, you'll find softneck garlic (which is the stuff you'd get in the supermarket) doesn't do as well as hardneck garlic. it's probably about now that you'll start to see 'horticultural' garlic - i.e. sold for the purposes of growing your own - appearing in garden shops (i usually get it in mr. middleton in dublin). you can plant garlic now and it'll overwinter with no problems.

Alun

How deep do you plant yours? I've just planted some cloves according to the instructions on the packet, and they said 4cm apart and 3cm deep, but now I see this site http://www.gardenplansireland.com/forum/about240.html saying to plant them 3 inches deep!

So, who's right here?

magicbastarder

i've always planted about three to four inches deep.

doctor evil

I planted my other garlic an inch or two deep as well.

I planted onions too but they have yet to show themselves. Both were planted on the 10h of October.

I have a lean to that I can dry the garlic in. I've noticed that this garlic stem is a lot thinner than the ones coming up.

I have a garlic bulb or two left over if anyone is interested.

Corsendonk

doctor evil wrote: »

Hallo all

Towards the end of May I planted a clove of garlic alongside my tomatoes, the garlic was from the supermarket and I just thought, why not.

It turns out the garlic is not sterile and has been growing well, it is against the wall in the back which gets the sun.

Why question is when should I harvest it and do I dry it out like onions?

My Rooster spud also grew well. This was a spud that rolled away and started to chit. I was late planting it but I got 2/3 big spuds and lots of baby ones. Could I use the baby ones as potatoe seeds for March? I did not get any blight and they will planted in a different section this time.

Thanks:)

(I love the fact that they both grew as I was mocked by naysayers that they would be sterile, I wonder if they would like their words boiled or mashed?)

Sterile??? Thats a new one, they never come across bulbs sprouting on supermarket shelves or spuds that they left to the side sprouting obviously.

You can use the baby potatoes but don't go too small, the other trick is to cut some of the large spuds in half and dip in dry sand to help "cure" the wound.

Usually they say you can get 2 years of crops out of new seed potatoes so you might be able to push it to next year with the seed from this years harvest. Gaelic is the same family as onions so treat them the same way.