My garlic, planted in late september, sprouted and was one foot tall when winter weather hit. It got down to -20. It survived and produced a crop. It was a northern hardneck variety.

Thanks. I did put a good 6" or so of hay on it. And I do know the freeze/thaw cycle is the worst, so thanks for helping to ease my fears. I have about 30 varieties that I grow every year that I got from buying 3-4 new kinds a year for the last 10 years or so and I would hate to have to re-buy them.

My newest one is Translyvania, that I got just because of the name. It is a soft-neck and borderline hardy for me, but I have been growing it for 4 years now and always get at least a few bulbs to survive. I figure in 10 or more years I will have acclimated it to WI pretty well. Just hope it gets through again this year.

Agree with the comments regarding the freeze/thaw cycle. When we have a late Winter warm spell, the mulch helps by keeping the soil from thawing prematurely. If you have a heavy layer of straw, that should provide enough protection. Be aware, though, that if we have an excessively wet Spring (as we have several times in recent years), you might have to pull the mulch back temporarily, to avoid rot.

Where are you in Wisconsin? We have snow cover here in the Fox Valley, although not as much as in years past.

I'm curious why Transylvania has poor survival in your location. I grew it for several years here, and it was fairly hardy... no excessive winter kill. In fact, artichoke varieties (soft necks) have mostly done quite well here. They have proven to adapt to my conditions - and recover from bad years - faster than my hard neck varieties. This year, under bad conditions, the soft necks out-performed the hard necks.

Unfortunately, I lost the plot on which I previously grew my garlic, and had to reduce my collection from 35 varieties to 20... and Transylvanian was one of those that didn't make the cut. It is not a bad variety & is capable of large bulbs; had I been able to keep 3 more that would been one of them.

all you need a lot of mulch

I am around the Spring Green area. We have only gotten a couple of dustings of snow so far this year so mostly bare ground, there may be some areas protected by the wind that have 1/2 an inch which is going to melt this week.

My porcelains & purple stripes always do great and are the varieties I have the most of. And I have good luck with Lorez Italian, Inchelinum, and Red Toch (artichoke's). Asiatics and Creoles are pretty weak for me.

I bought the Trans. from Burpee and the cloves were pretty small, but I planted them all anyhow. I think some of them were just too small to survive. This will be my 3rd or 4th year replanting them, and hoping to get enough to eat a few instead of just for growing out. But I have paitence and enough other varieties that if I don't get an extra bulb of Trans. to eat I will be ok.

Last year weather was weird and that could have made a difference. Plus the last 2 years we have gotten a freak hail storm during the growing season that shredded the tops.

"I bought the Trans. from Burpee and the cloves were pretty small, but I
planted them all anyhow. I think some of them were just too small to
survive."

Did you receive whole bulbs, or loose cloves? There is a direct relationship between the size of the planted clove, and the size of the bulb it will produce. The smaller cloves are unlikely to produce anything of significant size.

As a rule, for soft neck garlic, you should save the largest (outer) cloves for planting, and use the smaller (inner) cloves for consumption. In my experience, if you do this for artichoke types, the bulb size will increase very rapidly. Under good conditions, even the inner cloves can be of decent size; some varieties (such as Ron's Single Center a.k.a. Trueheart) are better at this than others.

Rain expected this week, chances are that the snow cover I have will soon be gone. I hope there will be more snow to replace it, after the cold front moves through. This year will be an experiment in winter hardiness... my garlic was not planted until December, and may not have been able to form roots before the ground froze. I've planted in November before & had good results, but this might be pushing the envelope too far.

I received whole bulbs, but they were smaller than I was used to getting from other sources. Because of this I did use every clove in the bulb. I knew the smaller ones wouldn't produce huge bulbs the following year, but hoping they would produce something so I could keep propagating it. Normally I just use the largest cloves to plant, but I received 4 very small bulbs and had the space so figured... why not.

I did have some to replant again this year, and they are getting slightly larger every year, not like my porcelains do though. But as long as I keep getting a few I am going to keep experimenting with them.

Wow, and I thought I got mine in late this year. Lets hope both of our garlic patches make through this winter!

I didn't plant until Nov either. Oct was sooo warm. At least around Milwaukee. First year of such prolonged frost since I started gardening. Hopefully they survive.