Looks like your garlic is coming along nicely. German white and Music are also the largest plants in my garden at around 2 feet tall and 6-8 leaves now, but a few purple stripes Siberian, Metechi, Estonia Red, and Purple Glazer are pretty close behind. My Rocambole garlic are lagging behind a little.

Looks like you have some serious weeding in your future! All of my garlic were planted in raised beds with 4-6 inches of shredded leaves so I have not had much weeding to do. My in-ground onion and shallot bed is another story though.

This is my first year of garlic planting in its new bed. When I dug the bed, all the Star of Bethlehem came up. The good thing is that they are bulbs and I can just dig them up and discard them. They are not seeds. That is in the plan.

Both Music and German White have large cloves, so the plants are also large. They are our most popular varieties locally. I also have several other types I planted for next year's seedings. They are just average now.

I need to figure out how to feed them organically.

I use granular Urea on garlic which works well. Fish and seaweed emulsion is a good organic fert for garlic but rather weak so needs to be applied more often. I fertilize about every 10 days from emergence until early May and then stop before the garlic starts to put up scapes which is end of May usually here.

help. I am in central NJ planted three half barrels full of musik and german white with 4 inches of hay on top. Its almost May 1 and i see no growth? nothing has come up? should i remove all mulch? Give up , are they rotted?

You should have removed all mulch a lot sooner. Still, do it now. Remove all and warm up the soil. Put back when the weather goes up to 80 degree and soil becomes dry.

The cloves should be still good. But I do not think they can grow to full sized bulbs this late...

Also, I only put down about 2" wood chip mulch. It know that is not much, but that was all I can manage. Wood chips are better than leaves or hay since the mulch does not block the sun. Leaves are the worst in this regard. More protection, but also block everything.

thanks , i removed all mulch last night. Let's see what happens. Thanks much for the info.

My music is also about my best, but a couple of the grocery store softnecks are at least as big. Siberian, VietNamese Red and Japanese are also doing moderately well. I am hoping for some size increase this year on a family heirloom I collected a couple of years ago as an escape that had been holding its own for something like two decades as an escape in a pretty heavy clay soil on top of everything. I still have some Music that has some usable cloves from last summer's harvest. I really like Music.

I have been sidedressing with Milorganite just broadcast and watered in. Back when I did lawn care, even when spilled that never burned a blade of grass. So I use it with a relatively heavy hand on my garden. I know where it comes from and I also know they absolutely claim it is safe for food plants.

Well, this is only my first year, so still just learning. I only go real organic. Yes, if you feed them, they grow larger bulbs...

Nice Redsun. Here's mine... Russian Red and German White, and a few giant elephants on the far end. Got them at the garlic festival in Saugerties NY

Russian Red

Elephant

Home depot softneck volunteers that are just as crappy this year as last. Dont want to bother weeding them.

So, yours are about 6 leaves now?

Yes. I also am new to this and don't know what to expect... but most of them look like they are doing well I think. I mixed in a good amount of black kow before planting in hopes I can leave them mulched and not have to fertilize. Let me know how yours turn out. :)

You never know with those weak growing garlic... I had a bunch of California Giant Garlic (not elephant) that crapped out last year.. Two tiny dime sized rounds survived to this year so I decided to plant them.. Those two surviving rounds produced some pretty large healthy plants, even though I kind of neglected them, expecting them to crap out again... Gonna save and replant cloves next fall...

Not much garlic this year... I ate most of last years Silverskins & Chinese Garlic, and the hardneck bulbils that I grew, won't be large enough to produce until next year..

well decided to dig and see. Garlic all rotted away, nothing took to root at all. Not sure why,

used good soil, 4 inches of hay planted with plenty of space between in a half barrel and planted at least 4 inches away from exterior of barrel. Any ideas? I will try next fall again but

would like to know what went wrong so as not to repeat.

Sorry to hear that... 4" is a lot of mulch. I know my garlic had trouble with 2" and many would not have made it if I left the mulch over them. Could have been bad garlic seed too, infected with fungus. I would try a different location next year if possible. Can't really comment about growing in a barrel. Maybe it made surviving the winter difficult idk.

yea i dunno know. you would think those planted at least in the center would be ok , but no.

No air, too wet. The cloves just rot...

so add, what ? more drainage, perlite? less straw?

Why not just plant in the ground? I think the container garlic over winter is probably just not going to work well, but I am no expert on growing in containers nevermind over winter. They would probably experience some hardcore heaving freeze/thaw as well, from all sides, in a container.

Some folks grow new varieties in isolated place, so diseases would not spread...

Maybe then just make a raised bed?

isnt a container just a small raised bed?

Yes, but I am thinking of a barrel that is high up off the ground... not being as well insulated as a raised bed on the ground... but it may make little difference.

im thinking they just got too wet in october we had a lot of rain, those that waited till nov. to plant seem to have done well.

RedSun (Zone 6, NJ) wrote: "So, yours are about 6 leaves now?"

All my varieties have their 6th leaf now and some of the lower leaves are well over a foot long already. One variety has some cloves missing, but most of them have a 100% stand and they are all looking real good. The tulips I interplanted are just about done blooming, too, which is very early for them. Two of my species daylilies are also well budded, also very early; so I think the garlics got a good early start this year and should do real well in a very long spring.