Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Planting Garlic-How Many Kinds?

Garlic planted & tucked in


There are so many different kinds of garlic. Last year I planted seven kinds & this year I added nine more. If you are only used to eating the one variety in the store, make sure you seek out different kinds. You won't be dissapointed.

Here is a list of the garlic planted this year...



Softneck
Inchelium Red
Silver White
Red Toch
Italian Late
Silver Rose
French
Hardneck
German Pocelain
Rosewood
Red Estonian
Georgian Crystal
Chinese Red & White
Pitarelli
Brown Tempest
Lenigrad
Schumacher
Vostani


The total cloves planted were 382. That's a lot of garlic. But we do love garlic and try to eat some everyday to keep us healthy. We eat it raw. Cooking degrades it & microwaving destroys the allicin which has antibiotic properties. Cut up a clove, let it sit for 10 minutes, and add some honey to it & down the hatch! We are rarely sick. This might be why. I also cook with it but don't count that as my "healthy garlic dose".

Check out the We Grow Garlic website. The link takes you to the varieties they sold in 2009. There were more kinds I would have ordered but I waited until the end of August to place my order. & a lot of them were sold out. Need to mark the calendar next year for a July order.

14 comments:

Sue said...

Wow-that's a LOT of garlic. Guess the vampires are outta luck at your place!
:D

I admire folks organized enough to plant so many varieties. I always have good intentions, but rarely follow through. You've inspired me to try better!

Jenna Gayle said...

I've thought about planting some garlic, but I've not read too much into it. Thanks for the link, I'm going to check it out and see what all it takes!!

Anonymous said...

Boy - boy! Thatsa' lot of garlic! and I LOVE garlic. I put it in everything. Have never tried it raw tho to eat I mean. I thought it just kept the vampires away. Didn't know it had anti-bacterial properties. Good to know!! and! I had no ideas there were so many different kinds. Guess I never really thought about it! Good post....debbie

Sycamore Moon Studios said...

Wowsers! What a whopping amount of garlic. It was interesting to see some of the names...very descriptive.

Judy T said...

Yowza!! That's a LOT of garlic. Since I finally have a garden to call my own, I planted garlic for the first time this year. But only 25 cloves. But it's a start, you inspire me to branch out.
Judy

Wishful Acres Farm said...

Wow! So many varieties. That's great!
We didn't get any garlic planted this fall. It seems we were just too burned out by this time of year. Plus, we had nothing for mulch out at the farm. We had plenty of leaves at our house but nothing out there and no desire to trek the leaves out. Excuses, excuses... :-)

http://all-natural-mama.blogspot.com/

Unknown said...

WOW!! I will have to try growing my own garlic next year.... I do buy organic garlic and I love raw garlic chopped up and then put on top of cream cheese on my bagel..So good that way...I use garlic in everything..I also chop raw garlic and put it on my spaghetti sauce when we are having spaghetti or on garlic rolls...This winter I will be reading everything I can on organic gardening. And will be trying new things and doing the old things that I love doing... I love reading your blog and all the things you are doing..Lisa

Barb said...

Glad I've inspired some of you to plant more garlic & different kinds. It really is fun to taste test them all :-)

The cottage by the Cranelake said...

I don´t think we can find so many different garlics over here. Now it´s to late to plant it over here, the latest is in early september.
Have a great day now!
Christer.

Jenna Gayle said...

Ok, so I've been reading about garlic every free chance I've gotten today!! There's one thing that no one has been clear enough for me, maybe you can give your two cents? They're saying to plant until late November after your first heavy frost. I'm right at the border of Fl/Ga in a very humid area, so our frost is extrememly hard to guess when it will arrive. Do you think that if I were to plant a couple of cloves now the warmth would mess with them? I don't want to plant too early or too late!

Barb said...

I found this on Organic Gardening's forum from a Florida gardener...
I wanted to come back to this thread with an update on how my garlic did this past year.

Below is what I planted. I prechilled 1/2 of all the bulbs for 8 weeks and planted at the end of Oct. I grew the chilled and nonchilled garlic side-by-side. NONE of the nonchilled plants formed bulbs, nor did they make rounds. The nonchilled looked like small leeks. ALL the chilled garlic made bulbs. The Inchelium Red and Siberian plants made bulbs in the 2 inch size and were the biggest bulbs of all the varities. The Creoles were the smallest, but seem to be holding up the best in storage.

Artichoke
- Inchelium Red - 2" bulbs, matured in April
- Red Toch - 1.5" bulbs, Matured late May

Creole - 1.25" to 1.5" bulbs, Matured mid-April,8-12 cloves per bulb.
- Burgandy
- Creole Red
- Cuban Purple

Marbled Purple Stripe
- Bogatyr - small bulbs 1.37"-1.62", matured in Late March
- Siberian - 2" bulbs, Matured late April. 4 large cloves per bulb.

This past winter was the coldest in a while. There were 4 times we had freezes (at night) but it was not enough to make the nonchilled garlic form bulbs. This year I will prechill all my planting stock. I saved the best bulbs of those listed above and put them in brown paper bags and placed them in the crisper of the refrigerator today.(except Bogatyr, I ate it all before I knew it.)

The Creoles are small, but very good. I peel several bulbs at a time while watching tv and put the cloves into a baggie and keep it in the refrig. We eat the fresh, raw cloves daily.

I've learned a lot and hope to improve on size this year. One problem may have been the early heat wave we had in the 90's and 100's. My onions were smaller this year too. I've worked out a fertilization schedule and installed drip irrigation tapes, so I should do a little better this next season.

Besides my saved planting stock, I ordered the following and will prechill them when they arrives.

Siberian 1 lb. Marbled Purple Stripe (Grew well for me this year)
California Early, 1/2 lb. Artichoke
Silver White, 1/2 lb. Silverskin
Guatemalan Ikeda 1/2 lb. Creole
Mild Winter Exotic Hardneck Sampler pack(1 bulb of each)
- Morado Gigante (Turbin)
- Xian (Turbin)
- Tuscan (Turbin)
- Asian Tempest (Asiatic)
- Bogatyr (Marbled Purple Stripe)

I think if you want your garlic to form bulbs here in Florida, you will need to prechill the planting stock at 40 degrees for about 8 weeks.

wish me luck.... Michael

angie said...

Hi Barb,

I'm so impressed!

I love growing garlic and I am always saddened when I ask growers at markets what variety they have and they look at me like, 'variety?!?' Most don't even know the difference between soft and hard neck. I bought out one farmer's stash this summer and before I knew what was happening he had cut off the softneck tops that I was planning on braiding!

Several years ago I planted close to 200 cloves and after I gave some away we had just over 100 left for the two of us. Lasted just a few months. We eat a clove a day too!

Barb said...

Wish everyone would eat a clove a day. There would be a lot less illness in the world.

Nishant said...

put it in everything. Have never tried it raw tho to eat I mean. I thought it just kept the vampires away.

Work From Home