Hi Bio, I think you need to pay better attention to your drainage. It is no accident that most commercial growers use some form of raised bed. You might also research strains that are more moisture tolerant. Some boast of that. There are also regional favorites in your area.

For example you get a lot more rain out there in the East than we do, but one of my first plantings of garlics I lost the whole works due to poorly planed drainage, despite having an essentially sandy loam to work with. You get significantly more yearly moisture than we do. Since then I have been a whole lot more careful and have very little to no rot problems, and even planting so very late as I did I still have nearly a perfect stand of everything but the Xian, which totally rebelled at the late planting.

My current Musics are direct descendants of the replacement cloves from that total loss I found that were surplus left over from planting the previous fall at Red Gate. Red Gate was very helpful and shipped them right out - I planted them right at the end of May and still got very nice bulbs that summer. Right now with the scapes removed the bed of Music is quite uniform and reaches over waist high and I stand 6'. I also spaced my cloves on 8"x8" grid and I will do that again. I can't say enough good about Music, but I lost the entire first planting, every clove, due to bad drainage design, and that was on a sandy soil.

OldDutch, thank you! My garlic is in a raised bed, but I'm not sure what is underneath the top 8-12" of dirt. This bed is about 3' high, and was built by the previous owner of my home, so for all I know there could be concrete under the top soil. I didn't dig any farther than 12" when I planted, so after this harvest is done, it might be time to do some excavation and add something for drainage or amend the soil. We have also had a very wet spring, so that may be part of the problem. I'll pay more attention to it next year! Hopefully some of what I grew this year will be edible (and if not, at least I got to enjoy some scapes!).

Does water take a long time to soak away in your raised bed? If so you may have what eventually happens to barrel planters, which is the whole works gets compacted. Worst case you may need to dig out the whole planter and rework it.

LOL: you may want to plant earth drills (daikon radishes) after the rest of the garlic comes out. If you have any kind of an effective hard pan, they have a reputation of being able to send their tap roots down through it, down as much as three feet and more. They also throw up a heavy leaf cover and actually mulch themselves, as well as tasting real good. Traditional daikons (open pollinated) are much like Chinese cabbage and yellow turnips, best planted in mid summer for autumn harvest; so there is definitely still time. There are hybrids which like the hybrid Napa and the white turnips can also be spring planted, or whenever you find the time. Word of warning the daikons winter kill and then in the spring the heavy plants, long roots and heavy leaves, rot which feeds the whole soil, but can be a bit too much aroma to take. I just planted a row a week ago, and already have sprouts up and big enough to thin. I think I will put out a row of salad radishes tomorrow if today's rain lets up.

I haven't noticed that water takes a long time to soak in, but with all the rain we had this spring I really didn't do much watering myself. I will dig a little deeper in the bed once the garlic is out and think about earth drills as a potential solution! ;)

You have a picture above with a lot of fencing and railroad ties, a lot of treated lumber with a significant number of deadmen posts in the bottom row. That is where you garlic is coming from, isn't it. I had forgotten that you posted that before. It also looks like the soil has settled at least a couple of inches.

Actually if you only loose a couple out of that planting, that is really not out of line. The earlier picture showed good healthy growth for the most part. Let's wait to see how the rest comes out before we go any farther.

Yes, the soil has definitely settled a bit. The two I dug up yesterday were definitely outliers in terms of browning - most of mine still have only a couple of brown leaves, or browning only at the tips. I dug those two just to get a preview but I wasn't expecting excellence. I think the rest still need another week or so. We're heading out of town over July 1-4 weekend so just before we leave might be the moment!

I am starting to watch my Japanese. They are starting to show a bit ratty. Also a few have bulbils breaking out through the stems, which seems to happen close to harvest in many of my Japanese. The rest are not close here in Minneapolis. We have been getting a lot of rain here too, in the Cities, if there is also drought west and north. I guess I expect smaller than normal Japanese and the feral, and normal sized, but much later Siberian and Music. I do not intend to be too quick to dig the later two.

Next fall I sort of plan to set my different varieties at different times. The ones that are moping this year will go in earlier, Music and Siberian later, but even then any later than mid October.

There are quite some factor about garlic rotting and drainage. Last fall, I dug a new garlic bed. I did the double digging and mixed with shredded leaves and composted wood chips. The soil is piled up, so it is like raised bed. But I still have some rot problem. So raised bed does not fix the problem alone.

To raise good garlic, we need good quality seed garlic, good drainage, good quality soil (not too heavy). The most important thing is to get garlic well established before hard freeze comes. For the ones not established, the root system is weak and is very easy to rot.

Most garlic doesn't like heavy soil, but the feral I collected has been maintaining itself on a clay based soil that is quite heavy for something like the last 30 years. That besides it being a family heirloom is one of the reasons I would like to get some increase in size for the bulbs. It is starting to look like I will have to do some pretty severe culling to get anywhere with that.

German Red

Music

German White

Happy this year. Have more than enough for next year's seed garlic.

My main garlic bed. Chive on the lower left corner. The second area will get further developed.

Nice. Real nice.

I planted 5 varieties that came up October 15, 2016; silver skin (10 cloves), Bavarian (10 cloves), German white (10 cloves) , Korean mountain (8 cloves) and Romanian red (8 cloves). The harvest of Silver Skin, Bavarian, and German White (37 bulbs) are in the first photo. The second photo has the Korean and Romanian added on top, another 18 bulbs. So I harvested 55 bulbs in a plot that is about 4 feet by 8 feet. The soil in the plot had been conditioned with 1/2 barrel of homemade compost. The plants were very healthy and seemed ready to harvest on June 24, 2017. I placed them out to cure under my pergola on my patio table. I will leave them there 24 hours if it does not rain and shake off more of the dirt before hanging them in my storage shed. I am really happy with the size of the bulbs.

Quite nice....

Awesome harvests!! Redsun you could open a garlic farmstand.

I harvested my garlic today. Only a few more rotters, my expectations were low but I am happy with the final results.

Beds 1 & 2... Music on the left and Russian Red on the right. These were grown in a spot that was basically full shade by harvest time.

Beds 3 and 4.. got some really really nice Russian Red

Bed 5.. my raised bed. Out of about 25 cloves planted this is all I got.

Todays rotters

Looks like I lost a little under half of what I planted. But this isn't too bad! And I got a full stand of scapes.

Peter, your looking great.

I actually consider growing garlic is a garden art than the $$. But I'm always on the cheap side. I have the land and patience.

For all the seed garlic, I invested about $45 total over the years. Since then each year, I cultivate the same stocks. Just want to get them established with my soil and weather. Over time, they are going to get bigger and better.

First time growing garlic and harvested it yesterday. It came out great! Now hanging up to cure in my garage.

Look great.

I pulled a few more today and all of them are on the small side, sigh. A couple had some blue-green moldy looking stuff on them as well, which I assume means rot. Drainage is clearly an issue! I am not planning to plant garlic in this bed in the fall, so hopefully its next location will be better, and in the meantime I can get this bed reworked so that I don't have this problem again.

I mentioned earlier that I had a possum knock over most of my Chinese Pink and Korean Red. It still had two or three weeks to go until harvest. I was hoping that they would mature okay. We have a lot of overcast dewey days here on th e coast and we had several of them at that time. I didn't like the way they were looking so dug them. The Chinese pink came out very large, some to 3"+ diameter. The korean Red heads are 1.5 to 2.25" diameter. I guess the harvest could be called a success.

The Chinese Pink had several heads that had started to form small heads from each clove. Any thoughts? Also, my Elephant Garlic seems to have huge cloves and no outer covering over the cloves ( I pulled four to check. I have been growing Elephant Garlic for a lot of years and get one or two a year like this. I hope the rest of the crop doesn't turn out this way. Any thoughts would be appreciated. I am in zone 9b/10a.

Nice harvest Laura!!

Sounds like it all worked out Thom. I have also had issues with the elephant garlic splitting. If they are already huge cloves might as well dig them up and eat them first.

This year my Japanese didn't do so well. They were starting to go down and looking real ratty; so I dug them today. No rot but only one bulb just barely making an inch and a half. All the rest between that and about an inch - way smaller than last year. Better than Xian but both of them moped on me this year. VietNamese Red is close to getting dug, all that is left really is a few days of warm dry. Music and Siberian are still going strong straight, tall, all green and robust. The feral is mixed some of the plants are real nice tall and green, some much smaller - all are way past scapes.

Nearly 2/3 of the Japanese have big fat stem bulbils, but only a couple actually sent up scapes.

This fall I plant the whole works much earlier, especially the Xian and the Japanese and the feral. Waiting until into November last fall was a mistake; no doubt in my mind. 8" spacing on the other hand seems to be just what Music and Siberian ordered and that I will continue. Those two still haven't dried up a leaf, still totally green and seemingly heavier stemmed every day.

So much difference between my 6 varieties in performance this year!

LOL no pictures until I have something to brag about... Hopefully that will be Music and Siberian.... Fall seedlings are starting to come up; so that phase has already started and is looking good.

I pulled my unknown purple today. Two of the seven heads had the individual cloves trying to form heads. The other five are good looking with tight wrappers with wide red/purple stripes. All 1.5" to 2+" diameter. We will try a clove when they are cured and if we like it I will plant the rest next year. This purple is apparently an early variety like the Chinese Pink.

I think I dug most of my garlic on the slightly early side, not waiting to get too late. After drying outside (in shade) for a week and hanging the bundles in garage for 1-2 weeks, I started to clean some of them, just to see what is happening.

Most are doing fine. A few of them have broken outer layers during curing. They are all the largest bulbs. I do not know if the temperature has been so hot, or garage is so dry. They are perfectly good to keep. But this can be a problem for the garlic farmers.

Because of excessive June rainfall (about 8 inches) I have been unable to finish planting my garden... and could not weed the garlic. July 4th was fairly dry, so DW & I intended to get caught up on the weeds in the garlic patch. But the folks who let us grow garlic on their property have a pond in their back yard. So what does that have to do with garlic?

MOSQUITOES!!!

There were SWARMS of mosquitoes rising, as soon as you disturbed the vegetation. We thought we were prepared with mosquito repellent, but the swarms would find any square inch of skin that was not protected, such as our ears & eyelids. After 10 minutes of swishing & swatting, we had to give up.

Still have to go back to cut scapes (except for a few of each variety allowed to grow bulbils), but will use a bee bonnet & gloves. Looks like the garlic will have to fight the weeds on its own this year... which may in itself be an interesting experiment. I was really looking forward to the harvest this year; now, not so much.

July started off here with another round of heavy rainfall, and more storms (possibly severe) expected today & tomorrow. It is a Midwest Monsoon. At this point, I am beginning to wonder if the summer will ever dry out.

I have now harvested 70% of my garlic, the remaining being Music with a few more days to go. These are about two weeks earlier than normal, probably due to our unusually warm winter and spring. I have them curing on my covered porch, with tables arranged to block wind blown rain, and a fan on a timer to help air circulation (although being on a ridge at 2,600 ft. elevation we are breezy enough).

The crop is larger than normal, with most bulbs 2.5 inches plus and some over 3 inches. The first garlic photo below is Russian Red, the second is Estonian Red, and the third is Music. Once cured I will brush them clean, trim them, and store in my cellar.

I reserve the largest 100 bulbs for seed, another 100 bulbs for a friend, 50-100 for use in canning, and the remaining 200 for table stock throughout the year. I am still eating the last dozen bulbs from last year's smaller crop.

TomNJ/VA

Russian Red

Estonian Red

Music

Tom, a real nice set of bulbs you got there.

I pulled all the rest of mine yesterday. They are curing on the screens in my covered front screen porch. I was probably a little early for the Music and maybe also for the Siberian, but they are well bulbed and should cure fine.

Today I planted fall crops in the now vacant garlic beds, after reworking them some. If you use coir like I do instead of peat moss, you probably had trouble finding it in the nurseries and garden centers this year, too. Try the pet shops. Those who keep reptiles use it for bedding. 3 bricks for about $10.00 makes close to 1 1/2 5 gal pails once it is wetted and the bricks are shredded out.

I trimmed my Chinese Pink and Korean Red for a vendor sale tomorrow. I used the prices from the local co-op for pricing guidelines (the produce manager helped me).I had both varieties separated but one of our cats got into my shed and knocked everything on the floor. Since both varieties look so much alike, I am selling it as oriental red. Fortunately, I had already saved the largest for seed. The largest for sale are 3'+ diameter, the smallest 1" diameter. The Chinese pink is by far the larger. It's a keeper and I think that the Korean is also. The Gorgean Fire is looking good also, Will pull it in about two weeks,. The Tibetian is a disappointment, won't grow it next year. I think that I may try Music and maybe a soft neck. Tried to load picture, Me vs windows 10, windows wins every time. Time to call my grandson.

Zeedman, try using a large fan where you are working. If possible. The fan should disperse your smell and make it difficult for them to land as mosquitos are weak flyers.

I'm relatively new to growing garlic. I grew inchelium red in nj but it never grew big. So I tried growing music from bulbils I got on eBay. I planted the resultant rounds last year and the small bulbs I got this year are still bigger than the inchelium.

I also tried growing elephant garlic from a distributor in California. The cloves were enormous. But the ones I grew were never the same size, do they not do well in Jersey?

Is there a way to make garlic more pungent? Like adding sulfur to the soil.

I took some of my garlic to our town celebration today. I made about $60.00. It made me feel good. Now I can buy more seed garlic for next year. After I pull and cure my elephant garlic and my georgian fire I will hit the local farmers market. I plan to pull the elephant garlic tomorrow and my georgian fire in about two weeks. I want to try a softneck nextyear. does anyone have any suggestions. I live on the coast with a temperate climate and lots of fog.

My first-ever garlic harvest is complete! I'm happy to say that at least some of my planting came out decently, despite a few rotters and quite a few undersized bulbs. I planted 45 cloves and had 43 of them sprout, which I thought was pretty good! I dug up 12 that either browned early or looked like they were rotting, all of which were fairly small, but 3-4 of them had usable cloves, which I'll be eating right away.

I planted a total of 8 Music, 21 German Giant and 16 Russian Red. My harvest today was 5 good-sized Music (2.5" largest), 17 German Giant (about 10-12 of which are of decent size, about 2") and 9 Russian Red (of which only 4-5 are decent size). Clearly Russian Red is a bit more finicky in my area than the others, so although I will try it again, I don't know that it will be a favorite long-term. I definitely want to plant more Music next year, and perhaps experiment with another variety or two.

Music:

German Giant:

Russian Red:

Nice looking harvests everyone!

Biodanonima - Russian Red has also been finicky for me and this is the last year that I am going to grow it. For a Rocambole type I am going to just stick with Spanish Roja which always seems to do well for me. I am cutting down from 10 types grown this year to probably 6 for next year. I am also going to increase my spacing from 6" to 8" in row to see how they do.

German White - 30%

Spanish Roja - 20%

Chesnok Red- 20%

Estonia Red - 10%

Purple Glazer - 10%

Siberian - 10%

Persian Star, Music, Metechi, and Russian Red are out.

LoneJack, why are you getting rid of Music? Most people seem to like it, and it did better for me than the other two. Doesn't it do well in your area?

I may try another Rocambole, like Spanish Roja, but I would also like to add a purple stripe or two. We'll see how much space I can devote to garlic this fall. We are going to build a large raised bed that will give me about 120 square feet of gardening space, but I don't know if it will be ready to go by mid-October. If not, I'll have to replant in the same bed I used this year.

I used to grow about 12 varieties. But now I only grow Rocamboles (German Red/Killarney red) and Porcelain (Music and German White). The other varieties did not grow well and it is a big headaches to grow so many kinds.

The German Red/Killarney Red grow well in my wet heavy soil. Both Music and German White are popular at my local farms and they did just well in my garden.

All other varieties are in my misc garden bed. I still grow them and use them by myself. Eventually they will be phased out since they have not been doing well here.

I sometimes ask myself why I grow any varieties other than Music. Music consistently delivers huge bulbs with six fat cloves. It has nice garlic flavor with a good bite, and the longest storage life of the varieties I have grown. I still grow Russian Red and Estonian Red, but am down to just these three after experimenting with dozens of varieties over the years.

There is no one variety that outperforms all. In my situation, German Red/Killarney Red outperform the Music. Also, it is very slow to get the Porcelain going because of the upfront investment to buy the seed garlic.

It only takes about two years to grow medium size heads from Rocambole bulbils.

I pulled my elephant garlic today. Out of about 140 heads I got 60 that have a good enough appearance to be saleable. The rest look like the picture.

There are 5 cloves on that head and only one is smaller than a golfball. Most heads have only 3 or 4 cloves, but they are huge. I think that I will take all the good looking ones to the Farmers Market. I will still have some huge seed garlic and plenty to eat and give away to friends.

I pulled a couple of my Aho Roho. They are a little smaller than Ihad hoped, but they have a ways to go yet. They have the most beautiful ans semetrical bulbs.

Biodanonima - Music and German White are very similar in taste, number of cloves, etc but for whatever reason German White always out performs Music for me so I am going to just stick with what does well in my garden. For the last couple years I have been planting more and more GW and less Music and with the increased spacing I plan to give the garlic this year I want to allocate the space to what I know will do well.

I will be planting my garlic in 2 4'x10' raised beds in a 6x14 plant grid so that gives me 168 total plants as opposed to my usual planting of 220+.

What's that old saying? Ya need to dance with the one what brung ya?

Seems to me that I read somewhere that Music, German White, German Extra Hardy, were genetically identical, but have different adaptation histories. (See epigenetics, which says that genes can take somewhat different configurations depending a bit on history over generations - we all know that garlics adapt ot local conditions over the years...). So whatever works best for you, go with it for sure! For me that is what I originally bought as Music and has been in my own gardens now for about 4 years. I intend to make my own Music... :-)

You are right OldDutch, Garlic does adapt. If it looks at all promising, give it a chance. I was going to discontue my Tibetian but part of the bed looks pretty good. I will plant the biggest and see what happens next year. My Turkish Giant isn't giant. Very puny bulbs after 3 years. It,s being cut from the team.

I am finding out with the feral I collected that part of the set seems to want to stay tiny, while others grow out pretty decent sized bulbs, not huge, but definitely usable, and getting a little better every generation. It almost certainly pays to replant one's biggest cloves from the biggest bulbs. It also seems to me that the Music I started out with seems to have been very comfortable in my garden from the beginning. :-)

I think I'll give Music a try next year, actually this November.I,ve had people tell me that it doesn't do well around here but I want to see for myself. I hope that it works out. I love the flavor.

Thom, I dug several varieties tonight and my Turkish Giant was also anything but giant. It may get one more year here to prove itself....maybe not. We'll see how many varieties we want to deal with in October.

Naturegirl, give it more than one year. I gave it three years before I deleted it this year. It may do very well for you if you give it a chance. Save and plant your biggest cloves. Garlic will often acclimate to your soil type and growing conditions.

naturegirl - how many years have you grown Turkish Giant? I try to give a variety 3 years before giving up on it. If bulb or plant size is small or a variety is prone to rot I cut down on the number of cloves planted and only plant 6 or 12 of the very best cloves. If it won't do well after that then it gets culled.

Naturegirl, lonjack has some very good advice. Give it a chance. The flavor is great.

Glad to see that some are getting good harvests. I'd expected good results this year too... but it was not to be. The prolonged wet weather this Spring & Summer took its toll. Both of my turban garlic varieties are total losses; so I will attempt no turbans again in the future.

I had moved my garlic to a friend's property, since that site has better drainage. The drainage was into a pond, didn't think much about that - until this year. Plentiful rain + pond = a PLAGUE of mosquitoes. No amount of insect repellent would help, they just went for anything unprotected - like the eyes or nostrils. The swarms were so bad that DW & I were unable to weed, or to cut scapes... we had to let the weeds take over. We finally were able to dig 1/2 of the garlic today (the swarms had finally died down) and it was a dismal harvest.

All of the hard neck varieties are severely stunted, hardly even worth replanting. This was supposed to be the year I cut out the varieties which failed to size up; that plan - if I still go through with it - is now set back at least 2 more years. Truly frustrating.

Fortunately, the artichoke varieties did better... MUCH better. They were not handicapped by scapes, as all the hard necks were. They also seem to have been less affected by the weed pressure. The smallest soft neck bulb so far is still larger than the biggest hard neck bulb; most are 1.5 - 2". Ironically, it was the soft necks which under-performed in the previous site... just goes to show the value of diversification.

If there was a bright spot this year, it was the experiment with walking onion bulbils. I planted large numbers of two varieties (one brown & one white) to see if they would produce ground bulbs large enough to process for dehydrated onions. The brown bulbs have strong flavor; but also have a stalk enclosed within the bulb, which is moderately difficult to remove. The white-bulbed variety, though, usually produced 2 bulbs per bulbil, about 1" wide - and with the stalk outside the bulb. Both varieties also produced enough large bulbils to replant. I hope to repeat the experiment again next year, but to remove the top sets (as I would with garlic) to see if that improves bulb size... the white variety (McCullar's) shows great promise.

So now I've got about 2 months to find another site for my garlic... since I don't plan to battle the mosquitoes again next year.

No more posts, Darn. Guess I'll have to do it.

I have finished my planting. I planted Korean Red, Chinese Pink, Georgian Fire, Georgian Chrystal, Music, Mount hood, Tibetan, Ahjo Rojo, Elephant Garlic and a couple of others. Also a couple varieties of shallots and a couple varieties of multipliers.

Thom - That's a nice variety of garlic you have there! I've wanted to try one or both of the Georgian varieties sometime. Maybe next year I'll splurge and buy a few bulbs online.

I grew the Georgian Fire this year. Big heads, easy to peel,hot and flavorful but it mellows when cooked.

The Nicest looking and biggest heads I have purchased online are from Keene Garlic. They have a nice website which is easy to navigate.