Terrible Garlic Year

15 years ago

Any of my fellow Texans having a terrible garlic year? I think I'll be lucky if I get anything to plant for next year. Forget about enough to eat.

Last year was my first year planting garlic, and it went great. I got the garlic sampler from SSE, which had 10 varieties of heirloom garlic. This year I replanted 8 of those varieties (2 of them didn't do well), plus 5 more from a generous GardenWeb trader.

But then we had this hard freeze in February where it didn't get above freezing for three days straight (unusual around these parts), followed quickly by this awful spring we've been having where it hasn't rained in two months, and temperatures have been in the HIGH 90's with very windy conditions. (You might have heard of the wildfires in Texas.)

I've been trying to keep up with watering my garlic every day, but the wind dries things out so fast, and then there's nothing I can do about the heat. Most of my garlic has died before it even started to bulb up. I think the freeze knocked out most of the softnecks, and then the summerlike heat in March and April is finishing off the hardnecks. It shouldn't be getting up to 97 or 98 until AFTER all the garlic is harvested.

It's really disappointing. I had such a great harvest last year, and I was really looking forward to some of the unusual heirloom varieties I got from that trade. Now I'm going to have to rely on lousy store garlic for at least a whole year, and I'll probably have to start from scratch buying all my planting stock again this fall.

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Comments (2)

seysonn
15 years ago
How do you know that you will not have a good crop?
Freezing cold should not be a problem with garlics.
About, no rain: You are doing the right thing, I think, by watering them. To conserve soil moisture, consider heavy mulching with hay, straw, pine needles. This way the wind cannot pick up the moisture from the soil. Also, it can help to kepp the soil cooler. I am in zone 8tish, in GA. My garlics have nice green tops but they have probably six more weeks to go before harvest. Right now they are like leeks, i.e. no bulbs yet. So I just baby them by fertilizing and watering, hoping for the best.
neohippie
Original Author
15 years ago
Well, a lot of them have already died, for one thing. I know I won't be harvesting those. They're completely brown, dried up, crispy dead. I have pictures of last year's garlic at this time and it's a world of difference.

There are a few varieties that are still green, maybe like three or four. With the varieties that are mostly dead, there are maybe a couple of individuals that have like one green leaf left, but I don't have high hopes for those making a good bulb with just one leaf left.

I probably should have watered them more than I did, but sometimes I'd get busy with work for a couple of days and not get around to it. A couple of days with no watering with this kind of weather (temps in the 90's and humidity below 20% with the wind blowing) apparently makes a big difference.

And I should have mulched them, but last year they did fine with no mulch, and I didn't find a good source of mulch until a couple of weeks ago (I usually mulch with grass clippings, but my grass isn't growing because no water).

We haven't gotten a good rain since the hard freeze in early February. Everybody kept telling me the hard freeze shouldn't have hurt the garlic, so I didn't do anything and waited to watch them bounce back, but since them I've just watched plant after plant shrivel up and die.
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