Sunday, February 20, 2011

Garlic Uprising

The garlic is up.  And rising.

Garlic with a thin layer of wheat straw mulch.
It got off to a really slow start since I planted it later in the fall than I had intended.  But the garlic is now making a strong showing despite my inability to keep to the schedule, and despite over a foot of snow (rare in this area) and long periods of below-freezing temperatures.

We've had a very warm week (temps in the 60s and 70s) and now the garlic is reaching for the sky.  I'm not overly concerned about any future frosts or snow before the weather permanently warms up because garlic is very hardy.

Inchelium Red garlic.
Note how each new leaf grows from the center.  You can get a fairly good estimate of how many cloves make up the overall bulb of garlic by counting the number of leaves.  Every leaf corresponds to a clove. It means that this little plant, which started from a single clove, is now composed of three cloves.  It also means that this plant has alot more growing to do before harvest later in the year.

5 comments:

Mr. H. said...

Your garlic is looking really good... mine will not even be planted for another month yet.

Kim said...

I'm definitely going to be planting garlic when fall rolls around. Thanks for the info on them. Cool little tip about the number of leaves equaling number of cloves.

Veggie PAK said...

Looking very good. I'm loving this weather we're having!

What Pigs Don't Know said...

Have you ever actually pulled up these young garlics to see if the # of leaves really does correspond to the number of cloves? In the past week or two I had to pull up a few that were planted in the fall and all of them basically just looked like slightly swollen scallions. No "cloves" to speak of - even though they have more than 5 leaves each and are taller than a foot. I did eat them like scallions - but I'm just wondering your take on this. -Carrie

.09 Acres said...

Good question. I keep reading that in the literature, but wanted to proof it myself. I'll wait till they reach about a foot tall, then I'll pull a few and let you know.