Sorry that gardening has been more of a challenge than usual. The difficult part is waiting and when the harvest is a disappointment the wait is even longer--next year? who knows if I will be alive, or so I sometimes think.

My yield was somewhat spotty this year as well due to lack of rain here over winter, but even in a bad year at least one or two varieties will do okay.

I had much of the same problem in the Northeast this year ... rough winter, cold Spring and then lots of water prior to harvest resulting in about 25% crop loss and the rest at around 1.5" bulbs if that. (same issue with my spring planted onions so it must be an Allium thing) Worst year in at least 10 but I guess that's the life of a gardener. I've left a few plants in the ground to grow out for bulbils - I know it will take a couple of years but hopefully they'll be really adjusted to my climate and produce well.

I only grow 5 varieties but most were undersized. All of them were planted in the same soil with the same sun and water. The hardnecks definitely came through the brutal winter better.

Hardnecks: My German Red was the only one that grew normally and had bulbs almost 3 inches in diameter. I had some Carpathian that I started from bulbils back in the fall of 2012 and they did okay for the most part but they still haven't reached full size yet.

Softnecks: Inchelium Red was undersized and Transylvanian was just pathetic. Prior to this year both of these varieties have always been very reliable for me.

And half my elephant garlic produced rounds with the other half having relatively small bulbs around 3 inches in diameter. I've never had my EG produce rounds before.

Rodney

Have not been on GW for a couple months so I will make up for it with one long post. :-)

I feel your pain, zeedman. Been a bad couple of growing seasons here as well. This year has been especially bad, possibly my worst gardening season ever. For the first time in my life, after 30+ years of gardening, I am seriously considering throwing in the towel and quitting gardening for a while, or maybe taking a year off. The thing is that a person can not really take a year off because the gardens would still need maintenance. If I am going to do maintenance then I may as well plant stuff. I also do not want to quit growing garlic, so at the very least I would have to continue to plant and tend to that crop. I also kinda need to garden every year to maintain my seed bank.

I know deep down that no matter what I say or think right now, when spring rolls around I will be out planting stuff. Cannot help it, the urge to get out into the gardens is just too great after putting up with another of our long cold winters.

The situation here: Lots of spring snow melt combined with deep frost depth and lots of cold rainy days left the ground saturated. Most of April and May were too wet too work in the gardens, so I did not get nearly everything planted that I wanted to plant. This turned out to not be that big of a disappointment because in June five out of six gardens flooded at least once (got 13+ inches rain in the first two weeks of June, 20+ inches in the 6 weeks from mid May to end June). Four gardens had standing water two or three times, one of those times my main garden was under 6 inches of water for several days.

Some of my internet friends tell me to move my gardens to higher ground. We live on the prairie, the entire county is table top flat - there is no higher ground LOL. I had water standing in areas I have never seen flooded before. Had 18 inches of water in the house basement after a three inch overnight rainfall. Pumped it out but the water kept percolating up through the floor.

Rain was not the only problem. One evening my area had east winds sustained upper 40mph gusting to upper 50mph for three hours continuous. (My gardens are most exposed to the east.) Shredded tender seedlings and transplants. Trees and limbs down. What a mess. I have had to pick up so many twigs and branches off the lawn and out of the flower gardens this year that I am truly sick and tired of it.

Had three separate hail events in May and June. Was small hail and short lived events, but they still did their damage. The first hail event destroyed the plastic windows on my grow boxes and subsequently damaged many of my seedlings that were inside the boxes.

Soil is now heavily hard panned from all the rain. Upper 1-2 inches is hard dry crust and soil is saturated mud below. Will not dry out with that hard crust, and pulling weeds is an arduous, frustrating task.

Lawn got completely out of control. Am almost finished getting it back, just one area left needing attention.

July has been very quiet, only a trace of rain so far. I think we are going into another mid/late summer dry pattern like we have been having for the last 3-4 years.

Veggie Status:
Snap beans ruined. Reseeded in a dry garden and rabbits destroyed the seedlings. Shot the rabbits and ate them.
Replanted cabbage, cauli, broccoli. Replantings doing ok but doubtful I will get any cauli or broccoli.
Peas could not be harvested because of muddy garden so are now overgrown, hope to at least be able to save for seed.
All pepper plants destroyed or crippled (but I still have some container plants up by the house).
All tomato plants crippled. Getting a crop is doubtful, although I have already been eating cherries from my containermaters. The tomato issue is my greatest possible loss and my biggest disappointment. If I got tomatoes and nothing else I would be disappointed but content.
Cucumbers 50% crippled but recovering nicely. Way behind.
Winter Butternut Squash crippled but recovering nicely.
Zucchini crippled.
Spinach 100% loss.
Lettuce 75% loss.
Kohlrabi 100% loss.
Kale 100% loss.
Beets 75% loss.
Carrots 75% loss.
Turnips 50% loss.
Rutabaga 100% loss.
Parsnips 90% loss.
Parsley Root 100% loss.
Celeriac 100% loss.
Radish 100% loss.
Rattail Radish 100% loss.
Oilseed Radish 100% loss.
Wheat 100% loss.
Oats 100% loss.
Amaranth 100% loss.
Flour Corn crippled/stunted.

Potatoes, 500 hills. 50% crippled, 10% loss. Dug some of the crippled ones for new potatoes and found only marbles up to quarter size. Approximately half the crop should be excellent, though. My new project is to start saving true potato seed to develop my own potato landrace. A couple of my potato varieties are setting decent amounts of seed fruit.

Dill 75% loss. This is a big deal around here, always a shortage around canning time so several years ago I started planting a small crop. Should be enough for me for pickling cukes but not enough to share with anyone. Gonna be some disappointed friends and neighbors scrambling come pickling season. Oh well.

Other Herbs doing great (I converted to growing all of them in containers the last couple of years - a very good move for several reasons). Just finished drying first harvests of basil, parsley, sage, savory, marjoram, thyme, oregano.
Black, White, Yellow Mustard for seed doing fine. Seed pods are starting to dry down on the plants.
Sunflowers doing great.
Sweet Potatoes doing ok.
Onions are doing fantastic (from Dixondale starts).
Shallots doing ok.
Multipliers doing ok.
Leek doing ok.
Celery doing nicely.
Fennel doing nicely.
Tobacco doing nicely, but way behind.

Ground Cherries doing ok.
New strawberry plants 100% loss.
Alpine Strawberries have been nice.
Currants were bumper. Just finished harvesting, picked around 6-7 gallons of berries, most ever.
Raspberries were very good, fall crop development looking fantastic.
Black raspberries were ok.
Wild Black Currants looking good, just starting to ripen.
Gooseberries looking good, just starting to ripen.
Nanking Bush Cherries poor (spring pollination issues).
Sand Cherries looking good, just starting to ripen.

Grapes look fantastic - lots of MN vineyards were crippled or destroyed by the cold winter we had. They all grow the "best" of the new, weak cultivars while my delicious old seedy Concords just keep surviving and putting out. This is why I do not acquire new cultivars of ANYTHING, because breeding for hardiness and vigor is at best a low priority - the goal always seems to be unnatural increases in production/yield, fruit size, sugar content, and (occasionally) flavor.

Apples looking good.
Tree Cherries failed.*
Plums failed.*
Wild Plums failed.*
Pears failed. *
Apricots failed.*
Chokecherries poor.*
Mulberries decent.

*Failures due to cold, wet spring weather during blossom period (was pleasantly surprised about the apples), but I have also noticed an utter collapse of pollinating insects around here. First the honeybees starting disappearing several years ago and now I am noticing far fewer numbers of other pollinators as well. I have been hearing this from others in my region as well as folks in other states. I fear this is a very bad moon rising. I am thinking of purchasing a honeybee hive next year strictly for the pollination benefits. Honey production would be a secondary, largely irrelevant issue. I assume all the criminal BT corn planted in my area will kill them off so I expect to have to purchase a hive every year. Problem with this strategy that I have not worked out is that hives might not be available for pick-up until after the fruit trees bloom. Would still be beneficial for all the other stuff, though.

Scheduled but never got planted:
Huckleberry.
Sugarbeet.
Mangel.
Upland Rice.
Rye.
Cowpeas.
Soybeans.
Dry Beans.
Pole Dry and Snap Beans.
Long Beans.
Sweet Corn.
Popcorn.
Sorghum.
Melons.

Now to the garlic. Harsh winter did not affect my garlic other than the deep frost delaying it by around two weeks (latest garlic sprouting ever for me). Even my experimental non-mulched beds survived just fine, which proves to me that garlic does not need to be mulched in order to survive winter (assuming an adequate snow cover occurs to minimize natural freeze-thaw cycles). Most of my garlic beds were either flooded or saturated in June. Same situation as zeedman regarding weed issues. I have gone into the beds to at least top the weeds so they do not go to seed. Yesterday I started digging the plants from planted bulbils, those plants are dried up. I estimate 10-25% of crop will be rotten or will not keep until planting time. Larger garlics from planted cloves not ready to harvest, garlic is maturing later than normal this year.

As previously mentioned, the soil is cement on top and mud below - will be tough digging and cleaning the garlic this year. At least I do not have to clean perfectly because everything will be used for seed stock.

zeedman, are you saying you are getting rounds from planted clove stock? I have heard of it happening although it has never happened to me, but in the past two years I have started getting rounds from rocambole bulbil seed stock. My rice-kernel-size bulbils from porcelains, etc. always produce rounds the first and second years.

I never had a rocambole produce rounds from bulbils until last year, they always produced miniature cloved bulbs for me. Last year approx. 90% produced rounds. This year looks like around 75% produced rounds. The rounds I planted last fall are producing decent cloved bulbs this year. I placed a heavy dose of granular fert in the trenches when I planted the roke bulbils last fall. Some of them produced rounds that are golf ball size, most average a bit smaller than that. It is very interesting to me why they wouldn't just clove at that size. I am wondering if there might be virus issues causing rounds to be produced.

Plants from planted cloves are doing o.k. I expect them to be smallish because I left all scapes on to produce bulbils. All is seed stock anyway, so no big deal.

I am retreating into growing strictly rocamboles, with maybe some purple stripes. They seem to be the toughest, hardiest type for the crappy growing seasons we are getting lately. I hope to be planting around 15,000 German Brown rocambole cloves, rounds, and bulbils this fall. This variety is my best and my largest inventory since the process of recovery from 2012. The stock has been tested clean of AY and GBN but God only knows about viruses (it is my understanding that pretty much all garlic out there carries a virus load, which is why I would love to try to get some true seed from this variety). I have a bunch of other varieties but I am becoming less interested in them out of practical necessity (not to mention testing costs).

Along with the hoped-for 15,000 German Browns I hope to be planting another 5,000 of all my other varieties of which I have much smaller inventories.

Gnats have been absolutely horrible. Mosquitoes and biting flies a nuisance as well. Impossible to go beyond the porch without mosquito netting and long sleeved shirt. When doing work requiring sitting, kneeling, or bending, I have to tape my pants cuffs and wear high top boots or ankles and lower legs will get all bit up. I can't stand using bug spray and have not used it in years, but I gave in and have been dousing myself. It is either use the nasty junk or stay indoors. No way I am staying indoors in summer time.

Bottom line is I think we need to just hang in there. We are due up for a decent growing season once again, everything is cyclical. Each crappy growing season we go through increases our chances of the next one being good. Of course that is what the farmers thought during the dust bowl days of the 1930s, and it did not turn out too well for most of them. ;-)

Well, gotta get outside to dig some garlic and attack them weeds. Doubtful I will be out in the gardens tomorrow, 90s and humid in the forecast for next couple of days. That weather will make the gnats happy (truly evil creatures IMO).

Take care,
-Tom

P.S. I might have some garlic plants that are resistant to aster yellows. Been babying along some survivors from the disaster of 2012 (seven survivors out of fourteen thousand). At least two varieties, but no idea what they are. At some point will have them tested for AY and then pursue some possible research from there if they show evidence of past exposure. Might be a potential business opportunity selling proven AY resistant garlic. Turn my disaster into an opportunity, make up for the business loss. Who knows...

This post was edited by soilent_green on Mon, Jul 21, 14 at 11:04

Good to hear from you again, Tom. I kind of figured you were in the same situation, Minnesota has been hit even harder by the rains than Wisconsin.

"zeedman, are you saying you are getting rounds from planted clove stock?"

Yes, from my clove-planted artichoke garlics. The first time I have seen such a thing, and have only heard of that happening with elephant garlic. I guess those plants barely survived, and had only enough strength to produce a round. I am hopeful that those rounds will produce good sized bulbs next year - weather permitting.

" For the first time in my life, after 30+ years of gardening, I am seriously considering throwing in the towel and quitting gardening for a while, or maybe taking a year off."

That was my situation last year, when the majority of my rural plot was fallow, again due to nearly constant June rains. The silver lining of that fallow year was that it gave me a chance to reduce the perennial weeds which had been building up... I was able to eliminate the thistle & dandelion, and even the creeping jenny lost ground. The down side is that the annual weeds took advantage of the wet springs & went to seed before I could do anything about it, so my annual weed load has increased by an order of magnitude.

This year I have planted about 2/3 of that plot, but that planting was done late, and often not with the seed crops that had been planned. I put in all of my 3-month-old tomato, eggplant, and pepper transplants, and while they are recovering pretty quickly, it remains to be seen if any of them will have time to ripen. Everything planted early by seed in the middle 1/3 was drowned by the rain, and is a total loss. Last year was actually my worst year ever... but I have never in 40 years of gardening experienced such a string of bad years. Since 2010, the only time I was able to get the entire garden planted as planned - and not subsequently flooded - was in 2012. My entire preservation program has now been hopelessly derailed, to the point where I will be throwing much of my older seed into a freezer just to keep it from dying. It has caused me to question whether my preservation efforts are sustainable, or whether I need to adjust my goals to something more realistically attainable.

I get astronomical updates periodically from Spaceweather, which has been reporting on the abnormally quiet 'solar maximum' that is currently under way. Unless solar activity increases, I doubt that the current climate pattern will change any time soon. Sure hope I'm wrong.

Tom, I think this post was the first time you have listed everything you are growing. All I can say is WOW!!! Truly inspirational. That is a lot of fruit, in addition to your vegetables. I'd love to drop by & see all that some day.

But back to garlic. ;-) Not quite ready to throw in the towel just yet, but I need a few good years to get back on track. Finding an alternative site with higher ground would help a lot, something to investigate over the summer. I still plan to increase my garlic collection to somewhere around 40 varieties, and to add a perennial allium bed. Making raised beds will help reduce losses due to waterlogged soil, I will be using a hiller attachment on the tractor this year to form the garlic beds.

It's been a decent garlic and onion year here, but every season something goes bad unexpectedly. Last year my cukes were a scratch and tomatoes were marginal. This was looking like a phenomenal tomato year until three days ago, when 48 hrs of rain got septoria leafspot going. On the other hand, the rain was perfect for getting seeds up for fall rutabagas and parsnips.

I love having almost all the alliums, except for a few shallots, out of the garden and halfway cured. Fewer babies to worry about.

My garlics here in Minneapolis are almost cured at this point, all the hardnecks did well as did the Japanese, although the Japanese did not all produce scapes, but the softnecks were pretty sad. I have an experimental bed of early summer planting that is growing pretty well and some specials like sand leek, top sets, and elephant to work around.

I guess I must be really lucky, since I have both a sandy loam and it is all downhill here from my lot no matter which way you go. I had no flooding problems in my garden, or in my basement either for that matter this year.

Once I get back from family gathering next weekend, I will be planting fall garden items, and doing a pile of weed cleanup, that got ahead of me this year. Winter radishes and daikons, Chinese cabbage, napa, fall cabbages, white and yellow turnips, also some late carrots; I am also going to experiment with seeding in some onions thick and late to see if I can produce my own sets from Copra seed. The only alliums I have left to harvest are this year's Copra and most of them are down but not drying off yet. They really didn't size up real well this year.

Butterbush squash from my own seed is now starting to flower with lots of female blossoms starting to show up.

Back in Iowa City, years ago, I was told for the best turnips to plant the 25th of July, wet or dry. That is this Friday. Fall coles are the best tasting and for many types the least likely to bolt. I also intend to try some late green beans and some yellow peas for green manure.

Nice thing about garlic most years is that you have the space available for fall crops from a summer planting.

"I guess those plants barely survived, and had only enough strength to produce a round."

So you think it is plant energy or lack thereof that causes creation of a round versus a cloved bulb. Interesting theory. Could be, but I suspect it is more some kind of environmental issue. If lack of plant energy than why would my 3/8"-1/2" GB bulbils size up to golf ball size, which is around the same size as the small cloved bulbs that some of the bulbils develop into. I doubt my virus theory stated previously has any merit.

I have also wondered if rounds are developed because fall-planted stock did not start to grow before winter freeze up, but there are holes in that theory.

I wish I could find some way to control/manipulate creation of rounds. I think that there might be a niche market for clove-size rounds. Sell bags of uniformly sized rounds by the pound. One round approx. equals a standard clove, that kind of concept. When cooking, simply grab as many rounds to equal clove quantity that is desired or that recipe calls for. No half-opened bulbs laying around. Admittedly a novelty, but that is what seems to catch some people's eyes in order to get them to open their wallets. I also wonder if hardneck rounds would keep better than the cloved bulbs...

At this point I have approx. 500 good sized rounds hanging in bunches of 25. They look kind of neat - different, anyway. Lots more to dig up, am just getting started.

I have a couple varieties of softnecks but I am no longer interested in growing softnecks so I will probably use my inventory for food. Most of my softneck plants bolt and produce bulbils in various locations along the stem or top of bulb. Nice if a person wants bulbils but terrible for marketing or braiding.

"My entire preservation program has now been hopelessly derailed..."

Sorry to hear your preservation program has been put in jeapardy by the string of poor growing seasons. That is a big problem. My problem is that I believe a scenario will occur in our lifetime where we will have to rely on our gardens for food rather than it being just a hobby, life interest, seed collection, whatever. If I truly needed all those veggies for food that I lost this year, I would be in deep trouble this winter (not to mention loss of new seed stock). That is why bad growing seasons scare me. In a way it is almost a good thing to experience these failures in order to learn from them. One thing I learned a long time ago was to keep at least a five year supply of seed in order to weather the down times. People label me a "doomer" but I ask them if they have been following the agricultural situations in California and Brazil regarding drought, as a prime example.

"I get astronomical updates periodically from Spaceweather..."

Great website. Been following solar weather for quite a while myself. It is important to follow because the sun is the primary driver of the earth's climate, all other inputs are minimal as far as I am concerned. Pretty quiet transition into the solar max. The sun was quiet all last winter as well. Beginning of another Maunder Minimum perhaps?

For short term weather trends I follow jet stream maps and forecasts. The jet streams in combination with surface analysis maps tell me more about what is trending than any other data, IMO the most important info for northern plains weather. I have found seven day forecasts by local media and NWS to be a complete farce and for entertainment purposes only. I have found such forecasts to be rarely accurate more than 24-36 hours into the future.

"I'd love to drop by & see all that some day."

Would be fun to show you around sometime if you are ever in the area, but I am quite frankly embarrassed with the situation this year and have already cancelled a couple of informal garden tours due to how bad things look. Maybe next year if you decide you want to take a road trip. :-)

"Making raised beds will help reduce losses due to waterlogged soil, I will be using a hiller attachment on the tractor this year to form the garlic beds."

Thinking about doing the same thing myself when I get back into full production. So would you then use a lifting bar attachment to undermine and pop the bulbs loose for harvest?

I am working on development of a product to speed up planting. If that pans out, along with some weed control ideas that I have, using raised beds, and using a lifting bar, I think I can really streamline the entire process (and thus be able to plant even more!).

OldDutch - I have never had much success with fall planting, but I may try a few things this year out of desperation. I wish you success! I admit using low tunnels would help me greatly with a fall crop but I just do not want to mess around with them due to the strong winds we get out here.

theforgottenone1013/Rodney - Don't know if you are interested but I would be willing to trade you some of my best German Brown bulbils for some of your German Red bulbils. Been wanting to acquire Reds for several years now. Bought several thousand GR bulbils last year from a supplier and had 100% failure - bulbils were not viable. GBs and GRs are very similar but definitely have some differing characteristics. LMK here either way, if you would not mind doing so. Thanks. (Note that it will be quite some time before I have bulbils cured and ready to ship - probably end of August.)

-Tom

The reason for rounds is a cultural glitch, among them too crowded, too little nitrogen, or too little water.

But rounds are excellent planting stock for the following year.

Tom,

I never had much garlic success until i went to fallplanting of hardnecks. One of the things winter does is to provide them with the proper chill to both root out and flower, provided the bulbils, rounds or cloves you plant have enough maturity already to be able to clove out, which cloves already do and that is why they can easily product smaller cloved bulbs than the rounds you may get from sprint planted bulbils.

IMO bulbils produce the same sort of infant growth that seeds will the first year resulting in a juvenile form - the rounds with some few very small semi-adult cloved bulbs, bulbs which very often have signifcantly fewer cloves than bulbs grown from true cloves. Garlic even seems to be able to revert to the juvenile, round stage from the smallest cloves in the poorest conditions.

Most garlic needs chilling, especially the hardnecks, if they are to bolt effectively and clove out around the scape. That is what fall planting does for my hardnecks, just like it does for the tulips I plant at the same time. I generally get some fall growth besides and that hasn't caused me any problem yet, not with the hardnecks, although it seem to have with some of the softnecks. I have some creoles set aside for next spring, provided they store that long, but will be refrigerating them from about the first of February to see if that will help with size by spring planting.

I strongly suspect that this far north, some varieties do better if pre-chilled (the technique, temps and length may even depend on the type of garlic) and spring planted and some do best if fall planted like some of our flowering spring bulbs do.

I haven't been at this very long but so far Music has not failed me; that is one I will keep, I think, but all my hardnecks did well this year.

Tom,

Fall harvest is from a mid summer planting which is almost too late already, but I am going ahead anyhow. Never used wind tunnels or that sort of protection, although my mother has used the clay drainage tiles that washed out of the draw back home for protection of her spring planted tomatoes. Hoping for some daikons, some turnips and some baby napa at least. And maybe some baby carrots. Also hoping that I can get some onion sets from some real late and thickly planted Copra seed. (I should at least get some green manure...)

We shall see what we shall see.