Late Planted Garlic

So I know that the time to plant garlic here is in the fall, about October. It starts its roots, soaks up lots of water all winter, and bursts forth in spring to make beautiful bulbs by early summer.

BUT

We planted all of our seed garlic in a 2 year old hugel last fall. We grew beans on it last summer, and thought it would be great for this year's garlic. We were wrong. It was so not-prime for garlic that almost all of the 200 cloves I planted are completely dead already, and the remaining plants are pathetic and spindly.

I still have some really lovely bulbs from last year's crop that were supposed to be for eating, but I'm sorely tempted to run out and stick them in the garden.

What will happen if I do that? Is there any chance I could have good bulbs by late fall?

What I really want is a time machine so I can have a do over of last October, but barring that, is there another solution beyond buying garlic this year and trying again later?

I think it's too late. You can plant it in early spring or in fall like you said, but I don't think it'll work now--I suspect the cloves will just stay dormant until it cools down again (or start to decompose).

Of course, you can always try a few and see.

Well, confession, I already planted just 6 on a whim. I opened the bulb to eat, but the cloves were so big and lovely and well preserved that I wanted to keep that line going. I thought if nothing else I could leave them through to next year.

They've come up fine, though I'm sure I'll have to water as our summer drought comes on. I'm mostly wondering now if they'll have the time and climate cues to mature this year.

hey... i read that you harvest garlic after 1-2 years, depending on the size you want. so i doubt that you could harvest this fall.

i planted mine last year kinda late. around this time. they grew for a few weeks, then lost their greens, then came back in late fall.
they re not big enough for a harvest yet, so i ll leave them longer. a few days ago, their greens started falling over.

but i still have many bulbs around which i wanted to plant. procrastinating that for months. so i ll try, because the cloves are already getting green shoots.


good luck

I know our usual schedule covers about 8-9 months from planting to harvest: plant in November (because we meant to plant in October but got behind) then harvest in July. I think they're mostly dormant for about 3 months in there, though. That would still make it November before a best-case-scenario harvest is available from June-planted garlic, which is a month or two past the end of good weather here.

I guess I'll just watch and learn from these 6 I've got coming up in the retaining wall, and resign myself to buying a case of garlic from some other local farm to see us through to next year.

Oh, and I'll go take a picture of the garlic on the hugel for the Garden Failures thread. It's pretty epic. I honestly didn't know it was possible for garlic to fail so hard.

i harvested 1 bulb of garlic (1 year old plant). it s looking good. the other start to loose their greens, but some develop some kind of bulb up the stem(green). like 6-10 inches above ground.
is that normal or are my garlics a bunch of weirdos who don t know to properly behave?

is this like a walking-thing? falling over and dropping another buld as a set a few inches away?

thank you

Tobias Ber wrote:is that normal or are my garlics a bunch of weirdos who don t know to properly behave?

It's normal for some types of garlic under some conditions...

i harvested 1 bulb of garlic (1 year old plant). it s looking good. the other start to loose their greens, but some develop some kind of bulb up the stem(green). like 6-10 inches above ground.  

If it's not a scape, you may have a variety that makes a little bulblet, a whole new little head.  I'd cut them off to encourage larger bulb formation.

I've had that too, Tobias, mostly in garlic that's been stressed by poor soil and lack of water.  Like Joseph says, it's normal for certain strains in certain conditions.  You can plant them or eat them, just like any other garlic clove.