Dug up 92 heads this evening, now they're bundled and tied and hanging in the garage. Love homegrown garlic, so much better than storebought.
Nice! You know, i never, until this moment, gave a thought to how garlic must grow. :o
It's very compact and low maintenance. I plant on a 9" grid in a 4' x 12' bed that is very slightly raised. You plant them in October like tulips, make a little hole and stick in one clove, pointy end up. Each clove makes a head that you harvest in July. Hang them in your garage for a few days to cure them, and then braid them and hang them in your basement for storage, cut off a head whenever you need one. I put a leaf mulch on them, so there is very little weeding to do, and you just turn the mulch into the bed after you harvest.
I'll set aside the 15 largest heads for planting in the fall.
shame !
i always thought garlic were growing like that from some trees :S
(http://p6.storage.canalblog.com/65/66/602894/70348186.jpg)
How did they get the garlic trees to grow under that metal shed roof? :o I can't believe that
@irrelevant thinks we're going to fall for garlic growing in the ground.
on the picture, they werent 'growing' there, they are there for selling purpose, but i really thought they were growing like that in 'tresses' ( plaits ? ) from a tree. like grapes ? ^^
(http://www.authentique-gers.com/Fichiers/medias/175245R-AB-T-.jpg)
Yes! I shall be doing garlic braids next week sometime. Or maybe I can show my wife how to do it, and she'll think it looks like fun.
Here's last year's harvest; this year I have nearly twice as many.
I'm feeling so misunderstood. ;)
@irrelevant, where do you usually store your garlic until it's used? I've always thought that fresh garlic, not yet crushed, has a really nice smell. Of course, I like the smell of crushed garlic, too, and love the flavor in food.
@salamander Of course it doesn't grow in the ground. It grows on garlic trees. In the winter we string lights on them for Christmas. I thought everybody did that.
We store it in the basement, we have a room that stays cool that we keep garlic, wine, and our canned tomatoes and salsa and stuff in. Last summer we got around 500# of tomatoes from 18 plants, and we canned ~150 quarts of various tomato iterations.
@irrelevant, I have to admit I never thought of stringing lights on the trees -- imagine an entire orchard lit up like ... well ... a Christmas tree. That would be something to see.
As an aside, spaghetti is pretty closely related to garlic, which is one reason they go so well together as food. For those that are interested, the BBC did a short documentary on the Swiss Spaghetti Harvest (http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/april/1/newsid_2819000/2819261.stm)
Swiss Spaghetti Harvest! I love it. Thanks for sharing that.
I first heard about that spoof when I posted this on a cooking forum.
Pasta tree very pretty
And the pasta flour is wheat
But the fruit of the poor pasta
Must be boiled before we eat
(http://www.drislink.com/slink/cooking/Pasta%20Tree.jpg)
Back more or less on topic, my amazement came when I first saw Brussels sprouts growing. I envisioned them growing like tiny cabbages. Instead, they grow on a spike, like foxgloves only not hanging down.
@irrelevant I'll have to save this garlic growing information for when we actually have a place with space for any kind of garden! I wonder if it would grow in a pot?
@slink I had to good image the brussels sprouts, I would never have imagined them growing like that! Very strange!
We got a pineapple plant last month and that was also a surprise to me!
We watch a lot of animal/insect documentaries as my younger son loves them, looks like I need to add some plant ones to them as I seem to have no idea how many plants look while growing.
woah, me neither i didnt know how it's growing. got to goggle it ^^
Quote from: slink on July 20, 2014, 08:42:03 AM
Back more or less on topic, my amazement came when I first saw Brussels sprouts growing. I envisioned them growing like tiny cabbages. Instead, they grow on a spike, like foxgloves only not hanging down.
Brussels sprouts are a funny looking plant, what with the little heads growing along the central stock and an umbrella of big leaves at the top. Back in 1970-71 when I was an intern in Monterey, CA, we would sometimes drive to San Francisco along the ocean rather than on the freeway. North of Santa Cruz there were several miles of Brussels sprouts fields. As they got close to harvest the smell was quite strong. When my wife became pregnant we had to stop going that way. And speaking of garlic, when you went to SF via Hiway 101 you went through Gilroy, CA, which was the garlic growing capital of the US at that point and the smell was pretty strong there, too. Since the smell was similar to onions I always got really hungry for a hamburger in Gilroy.
Monterey was also close to Castroville, CA, which was the number one spot for artichokes in the US. There we always stopped to buy a bag or two of artichokes (10-20 for a dollar depending on the size) and have an order of french-fried artichoke hearts. Mmmmm. Now I'm really hungry again.
Industrial farming like that is fascinating. Sonoma is the same way, only with grapes. And the town of Chablis in France, mrs. irrelevant and I were there once, and standing on a hillside overlooking the town, you could not see one tree, just hillsides covered with vineyards for miles.
Here's the garlic again, now made into braids.
Bah, lousy pic, sorry.
My father used to plant a few pieces of garlic beside the foundation of our building because he liked to use the sprouts in his spaghetti sauces, but when my sister was a baby she found these and ate them. You couldn't get near her for days. Mom made dad stop planting garlic outside and use a pot that was kept out of reach.