The garlic had a bit of trouble poking through the moss mulch so I removed it two days ago. After that, I got terrible tendinitis in flexor tendons of both of my feet and I could barely walk for nearly two days. Luckily it subsided almost as quickly as it started but I did not manage to re-do the mulching before late frost came. The plants should survive it but it is a bugger nevertheless.
© Charly, all rights reserved. Click for full size.
I planted five varieties, and I noted them in the picture. The label for each patch is in its lower left corner. Let us say something about them, starting from the left upper corner. I bought one seeding kit for each variety which consisted of three bulbs, except the last one, which only had two.
Rusinka – the bulbs had huge cloves, but only a few of them in each bulb, I got 23 cloves. It is a purple hardneck variety that allegedly originates from Russia (I am immediately prejudiced against this innocent plant) and it should be fairly frost-resistant. I did not do an exact count now and I can’t do one on the photo due to the bamboo obstructing the view a bit, but it seems that cloves survived winter so far. Huge cloves are a plus but I would prefer to have more of them in each bulb so I do not need to save up too high a percentage of plants to continue growing the variety.
Slavín – the bulbs were reasonably big but had some small-ish cloves – I got 30 cloves overall. This is a purple hardneck variety too and it seems all cloves survived winter and are doing reasonably well. I hope this one does well, I would like to have some choice in my garlic in the following years.
Janko – on delivery, very similar to Rusinka but it had even fewer but bigger cloves in each bulb. I only got 13 cloves. Thus the potential problem remains as with Rusinka. We shall see how this one does. I think all 13 cloves poked out of the ground.
Benátčan – this is the only white softneck variety that I decided to try and whilst I would like to have such a variety in my garden, I am preliminarily not optimistic. I got 50 cloves from the three bulbs and some of them were positively tiny. Even if the garlic is delicious, it is a pain in the ass to work in the kitchen. The plus side, according to the seller, should be a very long shelf-life. We shall see, how it fares. Allegedly softneck varieties do not do so well at my altitude.
Havel – another purple hardneck variety and this one I did not actually buy. My nephew bought two bulbs in the farmer’s market for food but the bulbs were so pretty that I decided to plant the cloves. I got 13 big cloves from just two bulbs and the cloves were pretty evenly sized which is a definitive plus if that continues to be the case. Even in the picture, it can be seen that all 13 cloves survived and are now bigger than all the other varieties. I did not like the president whose name this variety carries but I am still somewhat prejudiced in its favor. I hope it does well, especially I hope it survives this bout of frost since I am still slightly limping and cannot go outside to mulch them again.
After the harvest, I will decide which ones to continue to grow and which ones to discontinue. Nematodes can be a problem with garlic here, although my father used to grow it a lot when I was a kid. And my neighbor used to grow garlic every year right up to the year she died. We shall see how this garlic experiment goes. I would like to grow at least two varieties that do well. To cover my needs, I need to grow approximately 50 bulbs for food and an equal amount of cloves for planting for next year.
garlic is a character. tastes good in so many things, not just a spice but a food in its own right. but it can get you. once met a conventionally attractive korean lady who was practically pepper spraying from her throat. once met an old greek guy who was basically a garlic elemental, exuding allicin from every pore.
@Bébé Mélange, I do not need to worry too much about that right now, I do not leave the house too often and meet many people at a closer distance than several meters. It does help to stop eating garlic a day or two before social event. And also it helps to drink milk after a garlicy food. I just googled this folk wisdom and there is apparently even a scientific study about it on PubMed
Bébé Mélange @1: Had a girlfriend once who consumed lots of garlic. Going down on her was…interesting, but not as pleasant as it might have been. The solution? I started consuming garlic. Worked wonderfully. For us, anyway.
useful information all around, huzzah!
Interesting how these all seem to have eastern European names of various sorts. But I suppose that makes sense. Where else in the world would there have been the motivation to sink so much time and effort into advancing garlic technology, but the part notorious for spawning vampires. :)
Bekenstein Bound @#5
Well the Isle of Wight for one, there’s a garlic farm there that have developed at least a dozen varieties.
Charly it looks like all the varieties are doing well.
We can’t over winter things like garlic cloves or broad beans, it’s just too wet here and our soil is on top of clay you could make pots with, even with the raised beds the cloves just rot. We did try starting the cloves in pots in the autumn, but the spring planted garlic did far better, so we don’t bother now. It would be nice to get the planting done at a quieter time of year, but we manage.
@Bekenstein Bound, Eastern Slavs did probably invent vampires, but not garlic. Although garlic is an important ingredient in many traditional dishes. We even have a soup that is based on garlic and it is sold in an instant dry powder form too. And the webshop where I bought these offers 22 varieties for sale.
If you are interested in peculiar mythical monsters from Slavic mythology, try to look up the word fext, although English sources on that one are sparse. It is an interesting, and possibly uniquely Czech, monster.
@Jazzlet, I might have had the “rotting in the ground” problem with overwintering onions that I planted in the fall. None of those poked out of the ground yet. Just in case, I already bought some onion sets to plant because the seeds also mostly failed. I just can’t get the onions right no matter what I do.
I want to wait for how the fall-planted garlic turns out before eventually trying out spring varieties. Those are not so readily available to buy.
My wife and I were members of a garlic CSA for awhile, it was a shame they closed. It was started by a couple of retired professors and I don’t think they were aware of how much work farming really was. It was fine until one of them was was injured, and while they tried for a bit to keep it going with student volunteers it didn’t last.
But for several years we had a wide variety of garlic to try, all good.
In early spring we would get an e-mail that the garlic scapes were ready. The young stems of garlic were delicious, we particularly liked them on fried eggs. They are kind of like chives to look at, but they taste of mild garlic. Anyplace you would normally use chives or scallions you could use garlic scapes as a substitute. We looked forward to it every year.
I also became skilled at making sopa de ajo, the Spanish garlic soup I fell in love with when we visited in the 1980’s. I still make it regularly. It’s very simple, with sliced garlic, ham scraps, paprika, chicken stock, and dried cubes of bread; served with a poached egg in it. I see that there is also a Czech version, česnečka, which I’ll have to try. It’s interesting that česnečka doesn’t use paprika, but marjoram and bay leaf, and adds potatoes.
@flex, česnečka is an excellent food when suffering from flu or cold. When everything else tastes bland because of the stuffy nose, česnečka never fails to taste great. And since it is a soup, it provides much-needed fluids and nutrients in an easy-to-digest form, so even if the garlic does nothing against the illness itself, česnečka as food definitively helps.
Maybe try putting a drainage layer in? Something like loose gravel or woodchips, then a nonwatertight liner, then a raised bed of soil with your plants in it. The raised bed might not get waterlogged then, as long as the drainage layer has somewhere to drain to so it doesn’t become completely flooded.
I realized earlier today that I didn’t see your comment at #7 until after I posted my comment #8. No worries, such is the busy way of comments on blogs.
I cooked česnečka for our supper today. An excellent meal, and we’ll put this into rotation. It’s a nice rich soup, filling, but not stodgy. What struck me most about česnečka was how easy it would be to make a vegetarian/vegan version of the soup, probably without any great change in the flavor. I used a butter/oil mix rather than tallow for the initial saute (I have tallow, but I reserve it for Yorkshire puddings), and while I used chicken stock I could have easily substituted vegetable stock and I doubt there would be much change in the flavor. This would not be possible with the Spanish garlic soup (sopa de ajo) as ham is kind of an integral ingredient in that recipe. I’ll try a vegetarian version next time, I might even avoid the butter and simply use oil.
Děkuji!
Oh my goodness.
Even when I had a garden, I was not aware of all the varieties of garlic.
Nowadays I get garlic from the store, I have no idea what kind it is.
Wow, that’s an amazing amount of garlic. I haven’t heard of most of those varieties. It appears you will have a large supply and the garden is looking great for mid-March.
I live too far north for garlic to survive winter, though I did stick some garlic cloves that had sprouted in the ground as an experiment. Global warming has caused the last two winters to be very mild by Minnesota standards, so perhaps this year I will harvest my first homegrown garlic.
@Tethys YouTube Gardening in Canada (https://www.youtube.com/@GardeningInCanada) has a video on how to grow garlic (and lotsa other plants) in your climate.