Tuesday, October 04, 2011

Fall 2011 Garlic Plantings

Today I planted the new batch of garlic. I'm writing up notes as a hard copy of what got planted where, but also figured I'd document it here. See also my post documenting last year's harvests and observations on yields.

When I harvested the elephant garlic from the ecoroof in the summer, I replanted a bunch of the little tiny bulblet offsets, not knowing whether we'd still be here in the fall and how busy we or new owners would be, and how well organized for planting new cloves. I figure I'll keep an eye on those patches as the bulblets sprout, and plant some larger cloves in any thin areas. I'll plant the shallots on the ground somewhere; I still need to figure out their destination.

I planted 11 varieties of true garlic, all on the sunspace and front porch ecoroofs. Since our garlic plants didn't seem to be limited by soil depth last year, I spaced the cloves at 6" this year instead of the 8-12" of last year, hoping they still won't run into soil competition limitations. I planted 50 cloves of each variety (with three exceptions), using one "patch" of 9 sq. ft on the front porch or 12 sq. ft on the sunspace for each variety. I switched last year's three patches of shallots over to garlic this year. I planted a total of ~550 cloves, compared to about 175 on the ecoroofs last year.

I weighed the planting cloves to give a better understanding at harvest time next year of how much input was required for the yield.
VarietyRoofPatch# bulbsWeight (oz)Notes
Spanish RojaSunspaceNorth side center505.25Relatively small cloves
Mild French SilverskinSunspaceFar NE~808.25Relatively small cloves
Polish JennSunspaceSouth side center5017.75
German PorcelainSunspaceSE of chimney5016.75
Inchelium RedPorch1st stepping stone area on south side504.75Small cloves
Unknown #2 (Porcelain group?)PorchSW most garlic patch5022
Italian LatePorchNorth side, second most from west (west-most north patch with garlic actually in it)~352Small cloves
MusikPorchNorth side, third most from west (second west-most north patch with garlic actually in it)507Relatively small - one more year of growing out should provide larger seed cloves
NootkaPorchNorth side, just east of center (east of Musik)~382Small cloves
Appalachian RedPorchNorth side, second from the far east507.75
Unknown #1 (Porcelain group?)PorchNorth side, east most patch5012

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