Well, your first effort was probably due to planting too late in the spring. The cutoff seems to be around May 1st for getting a mature divided bulb in northern zones. What you got were what are referred to as "rounds". As you know, they were still quite edible. What you didn't know was that you could have planted some of them back and had really large bulbs the next year.

Now you are starting over with sprouted store garlic and already have them a foot tall. Then you apparently got them in early enough. Seeing as how it's a 99% chance that the variety is an early white softneck, you should get a decent-sized divided bulb if your soil is even halfway decent. Whatever you end up with, plant some of them back around October 1st. Then you're almost guaranteed to get good results.

7 years to get garlic, eh? Yes, you hear all sorts of gardening misinformation constantly. Thanks to the Internet, it's becoming much easier to burst some of those balloons!

Martin

My garlic has been planted in fall and grows over the whole winter. Right now, the greens are almost 2 feet tall and none have any scapes yet. Soft neck garlic doesn't seem to grow well in Z6 or lower, I lost all of my soft necks a couple of years ago and the nearby hard necks were all growing very well. Using store bought, I believe most are soft neck types. No, it doesn't take 7 years to grow bigger, that would usually apply to something like young asparagus plants.
Good luck!

Oh no!!! it would seem i am doomed then with this particular garlic then for overwintering since i am in Z5 Canada where winter temps drop as low as -40 with the windchill (which i believe is the equivalent to a USDA Z4)
I will look into getting some hard neck varieties suited to this area. One of my neighbours has an abundance of garlic coming up, 2'+ right now. He has a PRIME location, im jealous. I've never introduced myself, im rather shy, but i admire his garden every morning as i stand with my son at the bus stop.

Is there any way to tell a hard neck from a soft neck at a glance?? i noticed the grocers sells a few different garlic types, elephant being one, and another with a purplish hue.

You guys are awesome, i am so glad i found you. I will have to sift thru this forum to see if i can get me some onions and garlic growing!!! I am fairly new to gardening, this will be my fourth year with a veggie patch and right now i have limited myself to radishes, lettuce, tomatoes , asparagus and an herbal tea garden new in this year :)

Softnecks have a central clove surrounded by several more rings of cloves. They have no center stem. Hardnecks form the cloves around a central stem which becomes the base of a scape/stalk. If you buy a bulb of garlic, a hardneck variety would either have the hard stem stub still in the center or a hole where the stem had been. Softnecks would have a soft flexible neck and not a hole in the middle.

Martin

First off, Sarah, welcome to the Alliums forum.

Do review some of the past threads, as a lot of your questions will be answered. Plus you'll find sources, mentioned, for all sorts of garlic varieties.

No, you are not doomed. The guideline is that hardnecks _tend_ to do better in the north and softnecks _tend_ to do better in the south. But unlike with onions, which are very day-length sensitive, there are no hard & fast rules with garlic.

At the very worst, you will get green garlic----which you use just like scallions.

I'd offer good odds, too, that the reason you didn't do well with onions, in the past, is that you started with store-bought sets. As you hang around here you'll learn that most of us prefer growing from seed, from bought plants, and, as a last resort, from sets. Again, for the reasons just peruse the back threads.

Also remember that alliums are heavy feeders. So you want to prepare the bed well, and side-dress at least once. I use equal parts of blood meal, bone meal, and wood ashes in my beds, but there are other ways of achieving that nutritional balance.

Most of all, don't let Alliums intimidate you. They really can be among the easiest veggies to grow, once you learn a little about them.

Thank you Martin and GardenLad.

Martin, after reading your post i knew EXACTLY what softneck and hardneck varieties were. I have seen and used the both in the past. I know now that i did plant softneck garlic.

I believe the hardneck is available at the grocers in the winter time and the softneck is more common in the spring and summer months.

I definitely will be looking into hardneck varieties for planting in the fall. Im very excited now and will take the time to go thru this forum to soak up as much info as i can and maybe next year ill try some onions ;)

Thanx guys, you have been very helpful!!!

Sarah, if you're going to mail order garlic you want to do so as soon as possible.

Garlic dealers maintain a first-come-first-served list. So the earlier you order (for fall delivery, you understand) the better chance you have of getting prime bulbs.

For hardnecks, as a beginner, I would consider either Shvelisi (Chesnook Red) or Music as my first choice. Either of them produces well in most areas, and are good general purpose garlics.

For planning purposes, there are, on average, 60 cloves in a pound of hardneck garlic. And you can figure on 98% growing to maturity in most cases. Which means about 5-6 pounds at harvest.

In other words, a half-pound is more than enough to get you started.

While garlic seed stock initially seems expensive, the cost per bulb rapidly approaches zero.

You'll also find, once you've grown a couple of varieties of your own, that supermarket garlic is all but inedible. Generally, it's California White---a softneck with little taste, too much heat, and, often, bitterness. More and more, of late, South American garlic is being sold in markets. These are an artichoke-type, generally larger than the California White, and better tasting. But it still doesn't compare to any of the so-called "gourmet" garlics.

All in all, there are something like 540 known garlic varieties. So there are plenty to choose from.

GardenLad thank you. your info gives me a great starting point. I will be in garlic heaven!!!

Sarah, when you have a Stinking Rose tatooed over your left breast we'll know that you're really a member of the tribe. ;>)

LOL

Well, i did just sign up for a 2hr garlic workshop for this september. Does that count? They will teach me everything i need to know about growing garlic, cooking with garlic AND they will send me home with samples of seed garlic to plant on my own!! varieties that have adapted to and are being grown right here in the Ottawa region! Hows that for dedication? ;)

Then i plan to visit the garlic festival in nearby Carp this August! No doubt i will find some different types to try!

With so much garlic stuff going on here i dont think i will even need to mail order any!! I had no idea my area was so rich in garlic culture!!

I cant wait!!!

Sarah - one word of warning: this is an addictive hobby, I went from spending about $5 on unspecified Rocambole cloves from a local farm stand to $70 buying seedstock last Fall, and already $150 for this coming Fall. It is so wonderful to have a fall garden project, doubly so one that you barely need to tend from that point until harvest. As a fellow northern gardener, it is doubly gratifying to have a crop with varieties that do well in cold climates. I visit with my garlic patch every day, even though there is no weeding to be done. I feel like Zonker from old-time Doonesbury, talking to my (hem) plants.

Uncle John is absolutely right. Worse you will soon have to branch out into all the multiplier and specialty onions like I-itoi. Will it never end.

Actually I cut back this year to fewer varieties but still can't help trying a few new every year.

Warthog

Y'all think buying new varieties is expensive, Warthog? I'm working part time where I deal with the public all day. The price of those Altoids is killing me. :>)

Of course, I _could_ cut down on garlic consumption. Not!

I have a couple of other spendy hobbies so i hope this ones doesnt eat into the budget toooo much!! lol, my plan its to start small, i really dont have more than a 2' x 10' row to work with. I also going to try to trade for my new varieties like i do with my tomatoes. I was looking at seed garlic prices and WHEW!!! some places want 2.50/clove!! CRAZY!!! Ive been able to build my tomato seed collection to 50 varieties in 3 years just by trading, and i only ever bought my very first tomato plant (yellow pear) which brought forth the seeds to start trading. ;) Im hoping its that easy with garlic too: buy one bulb of a really good garlic, grow it out a season then start trading clove for clove with other garlic growers here in canada ;)

Its not as bad as it sounds. After the initial purchase, which can be spendy, just save the best bulbs every harvest to replant in the fall. I only spend about $20 a year on new allium varieties. Plus most of the members are willing to share or trade.

Warthog

Sara I have a cheap solution to your problem. Garlic really likes to localize. It gets happier in a region or location the longer it is grown there so . . . .if I were you I would bake a batch of choclate chip cookies or what ever else you make and take it to you neighobor and ask for a clove of garlic. Gardeners can be as weird as a snake's suspenders but they (we) are almost always generous. Just don't forget to say the very things that you said here about what an inspiration his garlic is. If you came to my garden and said that you would get a promice of garlic and you would make my day!

Tracy

Sarah, maybe we need some definitions. I don't know any place that sells garlic for $2.50 per _clove_.

When you buy garlic (whether in the shop or elsewhere), what you get is called either a bulb or a head. It is composed of smaller parts, each in it's own wrapper. Those are the cloves.

Surely you meant $2.50/head?

Besides which, it's a one-time purchase, not an on-going expense.

A typical bulb of hardneck garlic contains, depending on variety, 6-10 cloves. Let's do a worst-case math excercise:

Variety X costs $15/lb. A half pound of X contains two bulbs, each of which contains 6 large cloves. Cost of seed stock: $8.00

For the sake of discussion, let's assume 100% harvest. You will plant 12 cloves, at a cost of .66 each. You will harvest 72 cloves, bringing the cost down to .095 each.

Let's assume you eat 2 of the bulbs, and replant the rest. So, the second year you will plant 60 cloves, and harvest 360 cloves, bringing the cost down to .018 each.

Repeat this process, and by the third harvest the cost per clove is a virtual zero (in actuality, .0035).

I use three seasons for a reason. Not only does it show how little garlic costs, long term. It deals with the localization effect Tracy refers to. Most garlic has to adapt to the local conditions in your garden. Typically it takes three years before a particular variety reaches its full potential there.

So what happens is that by the third year, you are growing the best garlic possible, at, literally, no cost.

BTW, if you plant on 6" centers, you would still have room for 80 plants in the 2 x 10 plot. If you plant on 5" centers, that jumps to an easy 100.

A note on trading: While there are no rules, the usual practice is to trade full heads, rather than individual cloves. And the trading quantity, most often, is two heads.

So, for both quantity and quality sake, figure on the second season before you start any serious trading. But keep in mind that garlic heads tend to be friendly, sharing people, who often enough will just send you a head or two of a variety.

Unfortunately, we (that is, those in the U.S.) cannot send garlic to Canada (it's classed as a plant). So you'll have to find folks up there to trade/share with.

But, yes, it's just like tomatoes in that you can build quite a collection just by purchasing one variety of "seed."

Tracy thats a good idea!! i should take a stroll over to see the neighbour next time i see that he's out working in his yard. I'll take him a bar of my gardners soap (soap is what im good at making) ;)

Gardenlad i kid you not, when i say clove i mean clove. I cant find the site i was looking at now, but it was a canadian garlic farm site. They offered a "variety pack" 3 types of heirloom garlic, 2 cloves of each for $15. Thats $2.50/clove For that price I didnt bother to bookmark it. I have since found other national suppliers that are selling by the head or bulb... im glad i didnt jump on that variety pack right away lol

Even though another poster may want to rub dirt in my face and tell me that I am wrong, I still wanted to post this info/update on my hard neck garlic. A few off the end of a row had fallen over and were turning yellow. One even had its greens accidentially pulled off at the soil level. The small area where these yellowing ones were in was a bit lower and seemed to puddle up with water after rains. I think it may have been the cause of the dieing plants. Otherwise all the rest of my garlic have about 2-3 foot tall gteens and are very heatly looking. I decided to dig up just the few that had been mostly yellow and laying on the ground. They had really big long roots, but to my dismay, not much of a bulb formed yet. They were all planted the same time last fall and had looked very healthy until about a month ago when the few that were lieing down seemed to indicate that they were probably ready to pull. I guess not... Now that I have found that the few yellow ones were so small, I figured the rest should remain for a lot longer. None had any indication of a center scape being formed, so my guess of excessivly wet soil may have been the cause. I have put down a bit of bone meal (powdered), as I feel that by now they can benefit by this. The stalks themselves were nearly an inch in diameter at the soil level.

My shallots were planted in another area where a blueberry bush had been growing. Some of the shallots are looking great, but some only have 2 inch long greens that don't seem to be growing much more. I figured that the soil is still very acidic in that old blueberry area as not even weeds will grow there. First time for shallots, so maybe they will get a prepared bed for next year.

If they haven't formed a scape, they're not ready to harvest. Probably a drainage problem.
And for Sarah Bella - if you're going to a garlic festival you can undoubtedly buy seed garlic there for a lot less. Down here I figure on planting garlic on Columbus Day, October 12th. I mulch it well and it comes up in spring and grows like gangbusters. Some varieties of garlic will grow in fall but this German White doesn't seem to want to do that. And last fall I used my own garlic cloves so didn't have to pay anything for seed garlic.

Thats what I figured. At least I replanted a couple that I dug up. As to the scapes, when I pulled on the greens of one of them, the whole top came off except for a shorter thin green stalk. That was probably the scape forming. Still have many more to grow. A few have much smaller greens about the size of my baby finger in diameter. The healthy ones are larger than my thumb in their diameter. I put down a bit of bone meal the other day, as my recent check showed a bit lower in phosphorous. Bone meal is a lot slower to release compared to a super P type.