The best place to get Walking Onions is from other gardeners. The bulbil clusters mature in mid- to late Summer, and are usually traded then (although plants are sometimes traded in Spring). I maintain several different perennial onions, and usually have walking onion bulbils stored over the winter... but not this year. Too much snow on the ground to dig some out now. :-( Send me a PM next year if you don't find any elsewhere.

dadinthedirt that seems low. I never pay attention but I also never recall have gaps in my rows. Some do seem to take longer so may be more will come up? Fresh garlic is one of my favorite things from my garden!

dadinthedirt, I typically have a germination rate of 98+%. If you mulched the garlic, check under the mulch in the gaps to see if any plants are laying sideways. A coarse mulch such as leaves can be difficult for some shoots to penetrate and they will grow along the ground instead of upright. These can be rescued by removing some mulch and standing the plants up.

Thank you. I was pretty careful in planting to make sure that the cloves were all right side-up, and there was no mulch applied on top (warm climate). Clove depth was two inches. I had four bulbs, and I'm beginning to suspect that one was just dead. Good to know that germination rate ought to be much higher.

I typically get around 90% germination but don't always see 90% emerge with top growth in the fall. In your warmer climate you may see growth all winter. If soil stay above 40ish they should continue to grow.

Did the cloves from that one bulb show and browning or softness?

I've had both good & bad emergence over the years. The common factor in all of the bad years was excessive soil moisture, due to a combination of excessive precipitation (including snow melt), heavy soil, and poor drainage. In all of those years, the garlic was planted at ground level... sometimes mulched, sometimes not. Since I began planting in a raised bed, losses have been almost non-existent. Last year, I only lost 5-6 out of 150. Like @wcthomas, I watch carefully when sprouting begins, to free any which may be trapped under the mulch... but with course hay as mulch, most sprouts thread their way through without difficulty.

Artichoke varieties seem to be the most sensitive to waterlogged soil. One sign that this is happening, is that many of the surviving plants will form "stem cloves" well above the soil line. If you get those cloves, keep them, because they are the silver lining within that otherwise dark cloud. Planting those cloves in a location separate from the rest of the garlic can, in a couple years, yield fresh stock free of the soil-borne diseases which can accumulate over time in garlic bulbs. Periodically refreshing stock via bulbils, and rotating planting areas year-to-year, will help to maintain garlic bulbs at their largest.

I typically have a 98%+ germination rate too. Dan, did you refrigerate your garlic for about two months? You should have for your Zone 8, and should be just now be thinking about planting garlic., Nov. - Dec. is your planting window.

Garlic doesn't need to be protected from the freezing temperatures, and using thick mulch when the garlic hasn't went through vernalization will not grow a bulb next year. Dan if your bulbs didn't have a sufficient period of vernalization your only chance of getting a bulb is NOT to mulch until spring to keep the weeds down.

Old dutch of St. Paul, Minnesota who stopped posting Sept. 2021, stated he never mulched his garlic. He was never concerned about size and wasn't looking for big bulbs and never mentioned the cloves heaving out of the ground. The cloves will heave up if planted to late and hasn't put out roots to hold them in the ground when it freezes without mulch, but planting early will have two much top growth and will weaken the plant. But up north if you plant late usually a blanket of snow will insulate the ground so little worry, you'll just get smaller bulbs.

I've went from a few inches to a foot of dried leaves with no difference in outcome, and I'd rake excess mulch into the rows before they sprouted for weed control if needed. The eight Midwest universities suggest garlic will benefit with 2"-4" of straw mulch but they don't say how they'll benefit or if it's even necessary. No it's not necessary. but I do it for two reasons, to control weeds and the other of a lesser concern is to give the garlic the time to grow a bigger roots system before the ground does freeze. Because I do want bigger bulbs and nothing to do with heaving.

Planting depth varies by whom ever you reference and I have seen a few web sites stating 5" to 6" deep, and they should be dismissed . Up here in the cold north the mutual consensus from eight Midwest universities recommend planting to a depth of 3"-4" deep, or with the top of the clove twice the depth of the clove height . Sure, like I'm going to go by the clove size, and I just stick them all in about an inch or two regardless of size, and has worked for me. For central Texas many sites recommend planting garlic 2"-3" inches deep, or twice the depth of clove size (I guess garlic is smaller in Texas), so to me 6 of one or half dozen of the another, and no precision is involved. But over 4 inches and you may have problems.

Well, I didn't keep track of which cloves came out of which bulbs, but all the bulbs looked pretty reasonable. I'm just saying that if a quarter didn't germinate, and there were four bulbs, one bad bulb could explain it. The bed is somewhat raised, and moist, but certainly not waterlogged. As I said, I filled in the gaps with smaller cloves. Do I understand that smaller cloves are not as productive?

As a rule smaller cloves yield smaller bulbs but still usable.

" The eight Midwest universities suggest garlic will benefit with 2"-4" of straw mulch but they don't say how they'll benefit or if it's even necessary. No it's not necessary. but I do it for two reasons, to control weeds and the other of a lesser concern is to give the garlic the time to grow a bigger roots system before the ground does freeze. Because I do want bigger bulbs and nothing to do with heaving."

I did get some frost heave in the years when I didn't mulch - and none when mulched. Planting time for me is somewhat subject to weather, but I always plant ASAP after the October frost. I've never had sprouting though, so it's possible that I could move up that planting window somewhat without penalty. Maybe an experiment to try next year, weather permitting... it's rare that I get TWO dry planting windows.

Two additional benefits of mulch. In addition to allowing more root growth before the ground freezes, it also delays thawing in Spring. This prevents premature sprouting should there be an unusually warm spell in Winter. Those are not uncommon here... a prolonged early thaw as recently as 2021 tricked fruit trees into flowering, and the subsequent freeze destroyed most of that year's crop (including mine). Unmulched garlic might not be killed if it sprouted then underwent a hard freeze, but it would likely be stunted to some degree.

The other potential benefit of mulch is that if a green-cut material is used (such as hay) it will begin to break down relatively quickly, releasing some nutrients as it does so. i prefer to use a grass/clover hay, and other than whatever material may be turned under before planting, add no fertilizer other than that.

Re vernalization of garlic, I see a couple of references suggesting that, but most of the references for me growing locally, including our extension, make any mention of that. No, I didn't do that. Quite possibly it was already done on the bulbs that were sold in the nursery. Might be wise for a home-brew batch, though. My winter should accomodate that.

Dan, you got me wondering so I did a search for information, and I made a slight mistake only half true. Hardnecks require 6 to 12 weeks of cooling at least below 40 to 45 degrees to produce bulbs. Softnecks on the other hand do not require vernalization to produce a bulb, but chilling them in the fridge for two to six weeks and they will produce larger bulbs. Sorry for the mistake and did also find that purchased bulbs may have already been subjected to a cold period for the required amount of time. So your assumption that vernalization may have already been done before hand could indeed be correct. .

Thanks. That makes some sense out of the fact that several sites recommended vernalization, and several never even brought it up. Now, I *think* I have softnecks, because I'm down south, but as I said, these were sold as strangely anonymous and with virtually no info. Also, instructions about how to GROW garlic may not bother with worries about bulb size. Next year, I'll make sure to chill them, if just to hope for larger bulbs.

My mother has a stand of garlic in a large bed that self-produces a lot every year, so when I go to visit, I grab a bag of them. Though I think they are elephant garlic which is somewhat inferior, flavor-wise. I've never had to grow them myself. Just doing it out of curiosity this year.

I do a couple rounds of mulch. As I harvest garlic, I rake last years mulch that sat on the bed all summer into the garden path to mulch there. I put down a green mulch layer over the bed along with some quick growing stuff till it's time to plant in garlic in the fall. When I pull the quick grow stuff, I leave the green mulch- it's usually pretty well broken down. Usually gets mixed in as I'm raking and smoothing the bed for reset. After I plant in the garlic, I lay down an inch or two of pine straw.

I don't know if it really helps with heaves or not. But it sure does help with weed supression and keeping the bed evenly moist during the summer.

I've seen zero emergence on my garlic since I planted on Halloween. We've had several lows in the teens since then, but the soil is now thawed. I'm going to mulch with a few inches of shredded leaves today and cover the bed with some hardware cloth to keep the mulch in place and the tree rats out.

I've dug one of my horseradish beds a couple weeks ago and got it processed last weekend. I've got 5 pints of HR in the freezer plus a couple more left from last year. I'm going to leave my other 3'x3' bed until next fall to see what 2 year old roots look like.

Was out walking the gardens the other day. All my guys have popped up and got a couple inches of green on them. Looks like most of them are coming up so far.

Me too. Mine are 3-6" and I have a 98.5% stand. Looking good!

I'll have to take a look at mine. They are usually just starting to grow about now but this has been a mild winter so far. I still need to clean out my asparagus beds before they wake up in 4-6 weeks. Onions starts will go out in about a month too.

I think I made this comment before, but not here. I am pleasantly surprised at how freeze-tolerant garlic is, We had a 5F freeze, in December, and everything got damaged, including onions, whose leaves were mostly killed (though they resprouted). The garlic was unprotected and, while a bit limp after the freeze, recovered completely.

It's harvest time! And the harvest is very good this year. Despite the very dry stretch. A lot of hand watering at the crucial fattening time and mulch did the job :)

I dropped a couple of hardnecks this year. They weren't worth keeping for seed stock and taking up that space anymore by comparison to other varieties. Chesnok Red, Penoski Purple, and Dunganski. German Xtra hardy and Georgian Crystal are now at the bottom of the list.

Armenian, Crysilys Purple, Northern White, and Up North did very well, with the northern ones a bit better out of the four. Music and Porcelian did their good and reliable, a very nice size on most of them. Home hardneck was the winner, very good sized, seed stock heads close to tennis ball size.

Out of the softnecks.. well, all of them are good. Jolly did the worst, with heads being average to large grocery store size. Early Italian and home softneck did better, with large to very large culinary heads. Seed stock is tennis ball sized and there are several more heads in the culinary stock I can pull for seed if I really wanted to.

Now that I got the garlic pulled, I need to get the other alliums that I'm growing out for seed tied up and the whole bed tidied up. The sculpit needs to be seed-headed before it drops too much into the garlic area and I now need to do summer planting for early fall harvesting out there.

But for right now, rain is in the forecast. So just a bit of amendmendments to sprinkle in.

Planted a few inspired by this thread. I don't know if I pulled them sooner than needed, but a couple of the Hardy German stems were a little mushy so I just pulled them. Planted rather late.

Top three might be Duganski, should have took a picture at the store to keep track.

Middle three are Chesnok Red. Smallest size.

Lower is Extra Hardy German White

I also planted some California Softneck in late February, they made really nice quality green garlic "scallions" in May. The stems never were hit by extreme cold, so they were like regular scallions except better.

The tops for "Carpati" fell over yesterday, so I dug them. That variety is my "canary", since it is the only one which will signal it is ready to harvest. The bulbs are smaller than usual, which probably does not bode well for the others. With over a month without rain, it has been hard to keep the soil moist. Normally I plant the garlic in a raised bed to keep the roots above Spring flooding; this year that strategy might have been counterproductive. I should be harvesting the rest within a week, will post a photo then.

The killing freeze arrived only today, more than 3 weeks late. I haven't had the heart to kill the garden when it was still producing, and rain has thus far prevented me from prepping the bed... so it will be VERY late planting this year. It looks like there will be a chance to plant this coming Friday, so I'll begin breaking the bulbs today - the same 8 varieties listed at the beginning of this thread.

I'll be doing something new though. Last Winter, I discovered a way to preserve my garlic until Spring with minimal spoilage - so I decided to experiment with Spring planting. Potato onions perform differently when planted in Spring vs. Fall, so I anticipated that something similar might occur with garlic... and that proved to be the case. The two hard necks tested (one porcelain and one marbled purple stripe) both failed to produce a scape, and grew as soft necks. Of the two, one failed to bulb at all, and essentially became a garlic scallion. The other one fell over like an onion when mature, and grew a single undivided clove (a 'round') that was 1.5-2" wide. - which I find desirable. The problem is that I didn't mark the locations, so I don't know which one formed the bulb. :-( So I'll repeat that experiment again next year, in larger numbers, and with 2 varieties each of the porcelain & marbled purple stripe.

I planted mine ten days ago. California Early. I was *stunned* to see it popping up four or five days later, and right now it's almost a foot tall. At this rate, they're going to be trees by summer.

I haven't planted my garlic this year either, (zone 4) and hope to get them in the ground by Friday, hope it's not to late. I had to devote most of my time to an urgent issue out of my control so my gardens wasted away over the last 2 months. Today will be the first time going into the garden since then and what a mess I have.

On the bright side my neighbor's garden did very good after 20 years of self induced constant failures. Every year I told him what he was doing wrong and this year he actually followed my advice with incredible results. I said; "Rick have I ever told you how great your garden looks?" He said; "No." I said; "Well your garden is doing great and everything looks really good!" A few tears rolled out of his eyes and with smiles on both our faces we hugged and with a kiss on his cheek I said; "grasshopper, seek first to know your own journeys beginning and end, and the path can only be traveled with knowledge, discipline and patience. You have won the battle and you're now a master."

Then we started shooting crossbows at a target and telling dad jokes while smoking a few bowls and drinking beer until we couldn't hit the target anymore, then I stumbled home.

Got mine planted in about a week or so ago. There weren't many truly glorious days last month, and we took most of them out on the trails. The last very fine day I took the whole day to finish up putting the gardens to bed.

Made a couple new planting jigs for the garlic this year. Made planting a lot quicker :)

Zeedman - same. I have planted garlic well into November before, so looks like this year will be the same. All the snow we got yesterday will be gone today, and it supposed to be pushing 60 this weekend - so hopefully I'll get it in then.

As of Saturday, my garlic is planted & mulched; 160 cloves in a 32' X 3' raised bed. This is the first time that I've ever planted in the same place twice, so I added 6 bags each of topsoil and composted manure. There were no disease issues last year & I planted only the healthiest cloves, so I don't anticipate any serious problems.

2023/2024 Garlic.

@ekgrows, this is the 2nd time weather has delayed my garlic planting into November. The first time the ground had frozen a couple inches down, and I used a cordless drill & large auger bit to drill the planting holes. That garlic turned out OK, so I anticipate no issues this time either. The only issue is that after a day working in the chill, I came down with a cold. Guess that's why they call it a 'catching a cold'. :-(

I still have not put mine in the ground. Weather in the 60's this past weekend, and the soil temps are still quite high for this time of year. Plus, i had to use the last of the nice days to finish rebuilding my hoophouse. After 18 years, it was due. This weekend I plan on getting it planted - unless all of a sudden we have 70's in the forecast!

Curious what the opinions are about Autumn garlic sprouting above ground. You want it to get rooted before the ground freezes, but how much growth above ground is undesirable? You will still get garlic, but could the appearance or quality be affected if leaves freeze?

@robert567 - any growth above ground is undesirable. The verdict is still out about how much it actually harms the garlic - as it is very tolerant. Bulb size might suffer a bit. I plant as late as possible - to avoid any topgrowth. 2 weeks before the ground freezes is what I aim for. I used to always use Colombus day as my guide. This year, I'm over a month later.

I just finished planting my garlic about 15 minutes ago which is also a few weeks late for me. I wanted to wait until I got some aged cow manure mixed into the bed which didn't happen until yesterday.

I only planted 36 cloves in a 4'x4' bed again this year...all German White porcelain. I'm hoping the manure helps the bulb size which has been a little disappointing the last couple years.

I also added manure to the beds I have planned for onions and broccoli next spring.

We are supposed to have highs in the 60s for the next week before it starts cooling off to more normal temps. Chance of rain later today but if that doesn't happen I'll lightly water in the garlic tomorrow.

I was delayed a bit by a cold snap, but got my garlic in on the 8th, about a week later than I usually plant here in the Blue Ridge Mountains of southwestern Virginia.. Planted 180 Russian Red, 135 Music, and 135 Estonian Red. Today I will water again and then spread a dried grass clipping mulch. They are fertilized with organic Harmony 5-4-3 at a rate of 100 lbs elemental N per acre, tilled in right before planting.

I always get top growth through the mulch, in spite of my relatively late planting habits. The plant greens usually stop growing at about 4-6" and will get a bit gnarly with the cold of winter, but always recover by spring with no issues. Last year we hit -5°F one night and still the garlic crop recovered, as it has for decades. My heavy mulch may help the bulbs, but the greens are exposed.

I finally did my fall cleanup and laid out my rows for next year. I decided to cut back and only planted 122 German Red and 122 Inchelium Red in a bed following dry beans. I Added 1" of compost on top of the rows, but because the beans are nitrogen fixers they add about a 1/2 gram of nitrogen per sq. foot (40 lbs per acre). I also added about 2 grams of DAP per sq. foot (86 lbs per acre) of phosphorus, and the DAP included the equivalent of 33 lbs per acre of nitrogen.

Thanks to all who said it wasn't to late to plant. I dug up a clove today to see if ground was frozen and if there were roots starting to grow. The ground wasn't frozen under the leaf mulch and I had roots! From the weather forecast I should get a couple more weeks of root growth, so thanks again. I really thought I'd need to start all over next year but saved by the best.

I was very delayed this year and didn’t plant until 11/26/23. i live in zone 6. i have planted this late in previous years and always had a pretty good harvest. Hopefully everything comes up.

Results from the late November planting. Surprisingly the late planting last fall did much better than all my other planting dates in mid October. Both soft and hard necks were bigger and nearly all were uniform in size. I only had a dozen I'd consider to be small, so It does make a difference not letting top vegetation grow in the fall. From now on mid November.

I missed cutting off the scapes on three hardnecks so I pulled 3 bulbs on each side of the bulbs with the scapes and compared. The bulbs without the scapes are 30% to 40% bigger than those with scapes.

I agree, Kevin, I missed the scapes on 4 of my Music and got a single large clove from each of those, about half the size of the other heads, maybe even less than half.

I'll save them and plant them in the fall, along with the other cloves that I will save.

Mine did really well, I was happy with my 250 plants. I also planted a dozen or so elephant garlic, but the Music tried hard to catch up with it! Elephant garlic on the left, Music on the right:

My whole crop, drying out in the pole barn:

Annie

I put my garlic in the ground yesterday(Oct. 23) after prepping the raised bed with compost and some 13-13-13. Rain is expected off and on for the next week with above average temps so it should be able to get a good fall start.

I'll mulch it with chopped leaves sometime in November.

I almost forgot so thanks for the reminder and I'll prep and plant this weekend. I added three new varieties last year from a grower out of Wisconsin who sent me pathetic seed garlic with a lot of rotting cloves in them. I'd say a third of the cloves I did plant didn't grow but I did get enough to plant nice healthy cloves this year.

The new ones I added are Bogatyr, Aglio Rosso, and Music. I will say the Bogatyr has a bold hot unique flavor different from all the rest I do like and might make a great powder.

Yeah, getting the bed in is on the list of things to do this weekend. I'm a little behind this year because I'm covering a lot of shifts at work the last few weeks. But it's been so dry up until a week or two ago I didn't want to get the seed in anyway.

Nothing new this year, just keeping up the same as last year. I think I finally hit that sweet spot of growing and keeping enough to last me through the year! For regular eating at least, lol. Doing the same this year to make sure. I think I have enough seed to start a "wild" patch out back at one of the resting sites. The spot in the garden is getting to be too much and it's time to let it grow elsewhere.

I got my seed stock this year from a mom and pop grocery in Osseo Wisconsin when I was up visiting my brother. The produce guy said it was locally grown by the Amish. Nice big 2"+ bulbs of what I believe is a Rocambole type...may be Spanish Roja. $5/lb.

I lost my German White this year. None of it came up in the spring. I think it went thru too many freeze/thaw cycles which is my fault for not mulching.

I selected the largest 60 cloves for planting and the rest is currently in the dehydrator for grinding into powder.

I paid $32 per pound plus shipping from BJ's gourmet garlic and got garbage. I bought a 1/2 lb of each of the three new varieties.

Odd thing, I had a garage sale with a good turn out in August and had a nice display of garlic with the names and descriptions. The price was about $5 per pound and people thought I was crazy selling garlic for that price, and I only sold one bundle.

Ok, about 250 garlic seeded in. I ended up dropping the softneck, I've been liking hardneck more in the garden. But now I got that small pile of seed that needs to go out back, heh.

Planted 300 cloves yesterday. The day before I added about a 1/2 yard of aged leaves from last year mixed with 4 or 5 year old wood chips and then about 1/3 yard of compost, some gypsum, Epsom salt and a little 7-13-9 grass starter fertilizer with micro nutrients.

I changed how I spaced my cloves, the cloves are 6" apart with 3 rows spaced 9" apart in each bed. I usually did cloves 6" apart with 2 rows spaced 6" between rows but last year I spaced rows 8" and got bigger bulbs.

After covering the cloves I topped the beds off with about 12" of fluffy leaves and grass clippings. Last winter much of the leaf mulch was blown away by the winds before it snowed and I spent to much time weeding them, so this year I'm laying out a row of chicken wire over the leaves to keep the mulch in place. I need to finish the wire cover today.

This is how I gather my leaves to make life easier. I use a lawn sweeper but threw away the basket and use an old 16' long tarp plastic tied to the sweeper. Works fast and efficient and no problem getting around obstacles by drifting the tarp to clear them at 7mph with the zero turn.

Prepped my bed last week, tilling in Harmony (5-4-3 organic dehydrated chicken manure) at a rate of 100 lbs/ac elemental N, along with 3 lbs of pulverized limestone. Two acres worth of grass clippings are standing by for mulch.

In the next few days I will plan Russian Red (180), Music (90), and Estonian Red (90) for a total of 360 cloves. Will feed with bloodmeal at a lower rate in mid-March and again in mid-April by sprinkling on top of the mulch. I leave the mulch on all season and harvest bulbs individually when the top five leaves are mostly green. I clean by stripping down the fifth leaf at harvest.

Plants are spaced 6" in rows, and the rows 18" apart with the cloves oriented so the leaves fan out perpendicular to the rows to maximize sun exposure as shown in the photo below.

Mine went in a couple of weeks ago, 250 heads of Music. Good thing because I've been off getting a stent in a coronary artery, so I'm on "restricted duty" for a couple of weeks.

I don't mulch mine at all, I never do. I dig a rather deep row, fill it with composted cow manure, plant the garlic in that. I walk away and don't look again until spring.

I just use the nicest cloves from my harvest, this year there were some big ones.

Nice garlic, Thomas!

Annie

Due to a long vacation out of state, my crop went in very late this year, just before Thanksgiving. Fortunately it was warmer than usual for mid-November, so the ground was still workable. I've cut back to just 5 varieties now: Carpati, Ron's Single Center, German White, Krasnodar Red, and Special Idaho. Had a VERY large harvest this year from the 160 bulbs planted in 2025, so only 10 of each this year, for preservation purposes.

I'm really happy to see so many big garlic growers are still here. :-)

Lucky you zeedman, just missing the snow. I found out garlic really doesn't need to grow at all in the fall, and as long as they get the cold treatment (vernalization) they will do fine with or without any roots growing in the fall.

I got a really nice harvest this year. Lots of 2.5-3" bulbs. I planted 36 cloves of an unkown hardneck that I bought at a Wisconsin grocery store last summer when visiting my brother. I believe it's some type of Racombole...maybe Spanish Roja. I think it may have been Amish grown as the mom and pop grocer sources a lot of their produce from the local Amish community.

I dug some chicken manure into the 4'x4' bed in September and planted the cloves around November 1. No top growth last fall. The manure seems to have made a big difference in size.

I plan to plant 72 this fall so need to remember to hold back enough for planting. Maybe a dozen or so bulbs. I'll crack open a bulb after they cure and see how many suitable seed cloves I can expect per bulb.