Sounds like they are too a really good start. Keep us posted on how your are dealing with mulching things as we progress towards winter.

I put in 130 yesterday…mix of music, German red and Spanish rojas.

I'm all set. About 150 garlics and about 50 multipliers, with 50 red tulips between the varieties of garlic. It'll have to dry out a bit to be able to handle the leaves, but if we get a frost over night like is forecast, we could have a real leaf drop this week. I'm going out of town; so that will just have to wait a few days to go on the garden. I generally run the leaves through the lawn mower. That puts a little green with the brown for the nitrogen to balance the carbon a bit, and breaks em up, too. I got hackberries in the boulevard and elms in the back; so the leaves do not pack down like say a sycamore or Norway maple would. We shall see if my energy level keeps up with my intentions. :-)

All garlics are showing some sprouting, with nearly every clove showing in those planted on Sept 29, only missing a very few where the tree rats dug in the new beds - less of that than I expected, too. Leaves still not harvested. The last few years the garlics were fine all winter with no mulch. But the leaves still need to be dealt with (unless we get a complete snow cover!). There will definitely be a summer mulch, however, to help keep the soil moist. I have not kept that up the last couple of years and my harvest has paid for it.

I transplanted my elephant garlics and they seem to have all recovered without losing a one, the Eygptian onions of course, have all sprouted, and I think some of them have sprouted twice, at least it seems like it!

Today its snowing.

Snow didn't stick thankfully.

The leaves are piled up ready to move on the garlics once the ground freezes. If I find the time I intend to run them through the lawn mower first though.

Snow last night - doesn't look like that will stick either.

Hi OldDutch. I am in Minneapolis also and I planted 36 garlics total of Bogatyr, Dugansky, Georgia Fire, Kisklyk, Metechi, and Xian on 14 October. I mulched with a couple inches of chopped leaves and then some straw that day, but I have been a but worried about wetness. I saw your posts this morning and decided to peel back the mulch to try to dry things out a bit. The mulch and soil are damp but do not seem waterlogged. I have variously 1 to 5 sprouts up of each variety from just breaking through to maybe 4" tall. Looks like day time temps are a bit above freezing for the next several days and night time lows are in the 20s. My thought was to leave the rows uncovered during the day and cover them back up with new dry leaves at night. Do you have any other recommendations based on your experience? I got them in the ground about 2 weeks earlier than usual, but otherwise followed my usual procedure and in the past I have lost about 1/3 of my planting. I wonder if that was happening in the fall when conditions were still wet and not frozen. Thanks.

This year I planted my garlic in a raised bed on the 10th or so. I have not covered them with anything yet. Mine are currently sending up some sprouts which are all under 1" so far.

Last year, the end of summer and into the fall was very wet much like this year, and most of november was warm. I had up to 4" of top growth before the cold set in and the ground started freezing before I did any mulching with dry leaves. I don't recall the exact date I mulched, but it was probably after Thanksgiving.

I guess it is supposed to be in the 20s this week at night, but then be around freezing, or just above freezing next week so I will not plan on mulching for a bit yet.

In the spring I pull back the mulch on my garlic and asparagus as early as we get that first warming period in early to mid April to let the soil soak in some heat and dry things out.

Using this method I have not lost many, if any plants to winter stress.

I planted some additional garlic at our cabin garden just about on the Canadian border on the 15th when we were up there for hunting. They are covered now by a good bit of snow that may end up staying around until the deep freeze hits.

I think snow itself is a great covering if it comes early enough to protect things from the coldest of the winter. Trouble here in the metro is that it is not a reliable mulch option due to extended thawing and deep freeze cycles we get.

hey fox, I am not so sure that mulching one way or another before full freeze up is the most important thing. If you mulch it must be breathable, and whether you mulch or not the raised bed for drainage is far more important. That will become especially important during the spring freeze thaw cycles so that melt water runs off instead of having your garlics setting in it at the end of every warming day when some snow melts but the ground is still frozen.

Mid October planting has worked real well for me for years, and then last year I got lazy or something and didn't get my garlics planted until the beginning of November and they suffered for it. This year I planted some earlier than normal at the end of September and my Music in mid October. I have some shoots from all the various types even Music for the first time, but I do not intend to worry about how they will do over the winter mulch or no mulch. All my garlics are hardnecks and should be plenty hardy for this area, provided I got the drainage right.

Hi OldDutch,

Did you end up mulching your garlic? I finally mulched mine the Sunday before all of this snow fell on the metro. A few shoots were about 4" tall and clearly were growing throughout November. A few appeared to have burned tips, so I hope they will be ok. A bunch had not broken through but were still down there below the surface of the soil. One seemed to have rotted off. I put a good thickness of dry leaves over them and then replaced the hardware fabric frames I use to keep the squirrels from digging in the raised beds until I am ready to plant. I am a little worried about the rain that fell before the snow and ice having soaked the new mulch and freezing everything up and doing some damage, but maybe that is not really a concern. I guess I will find out in 4 or 5 months!

I got the leaves collected by not on the garlic beds. Another day late and a dollar short. I have not had all that much problem not mulching for the winter in the past, except that summer mulch controls weeds and conserves moisture better than not. I intend to do the summer mulch this year, and I have the leaves for it, too. Right now the beds are under a couple of inches of snow, with just some of the more precocious noses sticking just barely through.

I have found that raised beds are important for winter melt runoff to keep the cloves and their autumn roots from laying in the melt water that so often pools above frozen ground, then refreezes and rethaws. Viola rot! Mulch or not is more or less irrelevant to that concern.

I have one creole and one turban I am watching to see how they do without winter mulching. Always something new to see, and learn about. I have no fear for my porcelains, rocamboles, purple stripes, not for my Japanese either, all of them have survived this before with almost no missing shoots.