The new year begins here!
A perfect moment in tiny farming time as the first garlic goes in for next season’s harvest! It’s all Music (that’s the hardneck variety), and for the first time it’s 100% my own seed stock (last year, I had to buy some to add to what was set aside). The new garlic plot should be the best so far, with oats green manure and year old cow manure tilled in. Lynn and Conall dropped by to help. The row set-up is new. Previously, I’d done two double rows per 5′ (1.5m) bed, each double row spaced 6″ (15cm) in-row and between, with about 18″ (46cm) between the doubles. This year, a more intensive approach: five rows with 6″ spacing both ways, in a 4′ (1.2m) bed. What does all that mean? 500 garlic in 4′x50′ instead of 400 in 5′x50′. It should make mulching, watering and weeding that much easier! I tilled up the bed a couple of days ago to allow pushing in the cloves by hand (the moist, clayey soil gets pretty dense this time of year). The rows were marked out (you can just make out the lines in the soil), and we ran a measuring tape down the beds for quick checks on the in-row spacing, ’cause I’m a little concerned with crowding. They were planted about 4″ deep, from both sides, three and two rows, to avoid uncomfortable leaning (the greens machine was a little too narrow!). Afterwards, the beds were raked to fill in the holes. In the pic, there’s a bag of that new mulch, ready to go (although I ended up not spreading it today). The first 2,000 went in in three hours. I’ll add some more, another 500-1,000, a little later on!
Somewhat related posts: • First direct seeding of the year! • Checking on the garlic • All clear… • After the rain… • Digging garlic
WiIling Hands Organic Farm said,
November 7, 2007 @ 10:44 pm
Best site!!
How deep are you planting the cloves? Today was garlic planting for me too. How many pounds do you plant, was trying to do the math on the cloves. I have 100# and that is plenty back breaking enough, smile
Julie
Mike (tfb) said,
November 8, 2007 @ 10:09 am
Hey Julie: We were aiming for 4″ deep (I just added it to the post). This year, I’m up to around 120 lbs so far. The cloves in this season’s crop were huge, on the biggest size bulbs (2″+) , they were averaging around 4 per bulb, in the past I’ve gotten 5 per. Apparently, clove size can vary from year to year, same size bulb, different size cloves.
To get a rough idea of quantity, I do a quick average for the bulb sizes and work out the cloves per pound. This year, when we were trimming them, we separated the bulbs into three sizes: big (over 2″), medium (just under 2″), and…small. It’s not exact, but when you’re handling them, you know how it is, you can feel the sizes, they kinda naturally sort. So for planting, I’ll count the cloves for a sample of the large and medium, like, five pounds of each, then get an average per size. This year, the fat ones were about 4 bulbs to the pound and 4 cloves per bulb, so, 16 cloves per pound (not a lot, huh?!). The mediums were about 25 cloves per lb. So, with them already separated by size, I could roughly figure out how much I needed by weight for a planting mix of large and medium…. I was aiming for 2,500 and that’s now in, and I may add 500 more… Arithmetic to the rescue again! :)
Julia Southgate said,
July 28, 2008 @ 3:13 pm
Hi There:
I’ve been growing garlic in the Ottawa area now for about 6 years but I’m still learning. I have a question that I’m hoping you can answer… but first a little background.
We are a very small producer. We grow about 1800 plants a year. (that’s the number that works best for us for the level of manual effort and the size of our raised bed plots.) We keep about a 1/3 for next year’s seed, eat about 1/3 (or give away to family) and sell about 1/3. The money that we get from the sellings is put back into the garden in soil amendments and straw etc. sort of a win-win on a great hobby. We grow two varieties, Music and Russian Reds (at least that’s what they were called when I bought them at the farmers market years ago) here’s my question:
With the Music, the cloves are huge but often there are only two jumbo cloves per head! I know that the bigger the clove you plant the better, but are the twosies pre-disposed to produce another batch of twosies? Part of me says plant them and I’ll get bigger heads next year, but that means using up more of my limited yeild on seed. On the other hand, they are not as sellable since there’s only two cloves per head. They are wicked roasted since there is little peeling so maybe I should just keep them for our home use…..yum
If you have any feedback for me I would greatly appreciate it!
Julia
Mike (tfb) said,
July 28, 2008 @ 5:00 pm
Julia: Well, the quick answer is, I don’t know whether big ones with two cloves per will produce more twosies. As I noted in my previous comment in this post, the clove size rule of thumb size in, size out seems to apply to overall bulb size, but not necessarily number of cloves per bulb. With my Music, the big, fat ones tend to have 3-4 huge clove, and I haven’t noticed a tendency for the big ones to produce less cloves per, but that’s only over three seasons of more closely watching. Last year, I think I tried for a 60:40 ratio of medium to large bulbs/cloves, definitely favoring a good quantity of medium sized ones.
Everyone (me included) seems to like looking at bigger, fatter garlic, but I’m not sure how practical that is for cooking. Around here, we use up a lot of the seconds: smaller ones and accidentally forked ones. That’s mostly for chopping up, not roasting whole, and the smaller clove size is never an inconvenience. From customers, I’ve had no complaints. At the market, I sell ‘em mixed and loose, so people pick the size they want. The super large cloves are a little big for some cooking purposes, when you don’t need that much, but as long as people aren’t being forced to take a size they don’t want, it all seems to work out! I always sell out, and it doesn’t seem to come down to only the small ones left. Garlic lovers just want good garlic!! :)
If you already have too many big ones, you could maybe advertise them for roasting (or any processing use), and maybe invest in a bit more seed stock to get your ratio to where you want it. I’m selling at $8/lb, and seed stock works out to something just under that, so if you’re priced well, you won’t lose, it’ll be more like a trade, twosies for more cloves.
If you find out anything more, lemme know!