270 Garlic Cloves Planted

Growing healthy garlic in upstate New York is difficult at best.  The natural growth cycle of the plant is totally at odds with our weather.  Prior to its mid July harvest, garlic needs several weeks to dry down.  Our weather at that time of year roars to us from the south and features both high humidity and high temperatures.  Thunderstorms are common then and garlic plants that are trying to dry are repeatedly soaked.  As any Alabama belle can verify, mold is common under those circumstances.

This garden by the woods was opened to provide disease free ground for garlic growing.  Since I poisoned one bed by planting disease ridden cloves there, garlic is rotated through the remaining three beds.  A new bed is planned to be ready in time for next year's crop.

Six different varieties were planted in a bed that is five feet wide and eighteen feet long.  The covering leaves are newly fallen and were run through the lawn mower.  Wire fence was placed on top of the leaves to hold them in place.  It will be removed just as soon as the snow melts.

In an attempt to control disease, we soak and peel each clove.  This is an effective approach as very few of our bulbs are now soft to the touch.  Despite an overnight soak, the wrappers remain tight to the clove.  A well placed tiny scissor snip is necessary to provide a spot to pull on.  After that the most annoying result is a thin transparent skin that clings to whatever it touches.

This clove shows the most infection found this year.  As disgusting as it appears, the bulb felt solid hiding the problems just under the skin.  Had this clove been planted a diseased plant would have tried to grow infecting our soil.  Each of our six varieties revealed some infected cloves.  Many contained only a single small brown spot but all of them found the trash.  The range of infected cloves per variety ran from 5% to 20%.

This wrinkled clove is a new experience for us.  Only Lamb's-quarters presented these.  Four such cloves were planted and their locations recorded so that we can see what grows from these wrinkled cloves.

Having no hint of the outcome when peeling cloves, we need to soak enough to exactly fill the fifty or forty planting holes allotted to each variety.  That produced a large pile of peeled but unplanted cloves.  An old favorite recipe for garlic chicken solved that problem.

It is difficult to adequately describe the feelings that come with planting next year's crop in October.  We did fall plant potatoes but the garlic will begin showing above ground growth soon after the snow melts.  Our next garden is well and truly under way.

First Frost & Garlic To Ground

When we ventured out yesterday morning, it was soon obvious that the garden had been lightly touched by frost for the first time this season.  Cold pours downhill following the low ground to a final fall to the river.  Ground hugging pumpkin leaves were burned brown while the parts of the same plant that had climbed the side of the compost bin were still green.  Heliotropes near the house remain in flower while those nearer the frost river have been blackened.  We usually have a September frost and this late first appearance gave us an extra two weeks.

The carefully weeded bed that runs to the stone path now contains 270 garlic cloves.  They are covered with a ground leaf mulch that followed contact with the nylon string trimmer and a coarse wire screen.  This fine covering will delay early weed emergence giving the garlic a head start.  By harvest time the leaf mulch will have decomposed becoming part of the soil.    A similar approach last year brought the garlic to harvest with a single weeding.  Adjacent beds require attention that will follow now that the Fall planted crop is in the ground.

A carefully spaced planting grid was defined using the pieces of wire fence that usually surround the garden.  A second section of fence was used with the long spacing set across these pieces.  Squares 2 inches by 2 inches then covered the planting bed.  In a row, push a hole then skip two squares to the next hole quickly defined ten planting holes per row.  For row spacing, the procedure was from a hole skip three squares before making the next hole.  My purpose in writing this here is so that I will be able to read the plan next year rather than needing to figure it out by trial and error as was done yet again this year.  Dimples visible at the bottom of the photo attest to my first misplaced attempt.   This is rather close spacing but I can work a weeding hand between the rows.  My plants might produce even larger bulbs if the spacing was more generous.

We are still soaking and peeling our cloves before planting.  These sixty cloves are free of the evil brown rot.  Nearly all of them should grow to maturity.  This garlic was given to us last year by our good friend Helen.  She lives in the village house that belonged to her grandmother.  Adjacent to the Susquehanna River and tended for generations, her rich soil produced an impressive crop.  It is possible that we gave her the seed cloves that she planted but none of us can remember for certain.  The twenty cloves planted here last season all grew large bulbs that appear different from anything else that we plant.  The name Helen's has been assigned to this garlic.  It is the best that we have and it was the first to be planted.

Two rows of Purple Stripe were planted next.  It is different in appearance than the porcelain types that we widely plant.  Purple Stripe is a shorter more compact plant with more leaves than the others.  This visual difference helps keep the varieties separate at harvest time.  Purple Stripe does produce a larger number of cloves per bulb but many are small and doubles are common.  These remain available for cooking since we only plant the best.

The brown rot seen here is why we peel our planting cloves.  This small amount of rot is undetectable when popping cloves but if planted a diseased plant would appear for only a short time.  We try to keep our soil clean by planting only clean cloves.  Since we are still seeing rot we need to continue soaking and peeling.

White Bishop is the next variety planted.  Here again we assigned the name to this variety.  Anyone that has attended the Saugerties  Garlic Festival has encountered local grower Charlie Bishop.  He sells his garlic there with a continuous carnival barker's banter that never fails to draw a spending crowd.  He is a frequent source of seed for us as that gives us a chance to talk with him, gleaning the latest tips on growing garlic in the harsh climate of upstate New York.

Two more rows of Purple Stripe separate the White Bishop from the Richfield Springs.  Here again we assigned the name that identifies the original source of the seed.  This garlic was horribly diseased when purchased but we are making progress in cleaning the stock.  Nearly half of the cloves were diseased this year but none showed the huge blue fungal masses so common last year.

Three rows of Susquehanna White were planted next.  Two rows of Lambs Quarters finished our planting.  All of our stock is from local growers.

This may be our last season growing garlic.  We have placed our names on the waiting list for an apartment.  Finding suitable senior housing has proven to be a real challenge.  Income limits exclude us from a huge number of area apartments.  It seems that most developers prefer a subsidized but guaranteed profit over a free market risk.  That reality leaves those who have been financially responsible for their entire working lives lost between facilities that cost more than five thousand dollars per month and subsidized housing where our income excludes us.  So we wait.  When one of the present tenants dies or is forced to go to a home, we might have a chance at an apartment.  In the meantime the garlic is planted and we hope to still be here at harvest time.

Garlic Planting Time

The calender  says it is time to plant the garlic here in zone 4, but recent heavy rains have left the soil unworkable.  Its present moisture content would be better suited to brick making than clove planting.  Path development seemed a better choice today.  Keeping field grass out of the planting beds is the purpose of the path.  Last fall landscape fabric was placed around the outside of the garden and covered with grass clippings.  That worked reasonably well but the mower would dislodge the clippings.

The planting bed is the darker L shaped area.  It too was covered with grass clippings for more than a year.  Dead sod and stones have been pulled away using a mattock and a stone fork.  Several loads of compost have been turned in resulting in the darker soil.  Pasture grass has grown here for decades and now the soil is ready for a planted crop.

Dead sod and some topsoil have been removed from the path to lower the level of the fabric.  Bark mulch from a nearby hardwood lumber operation will form the path surface.  The bark mulch will rot down creating excellent compost.  We can count on yearly replenishment of  the bark mulch in the path.

This garden is far from the house hidden from view by the high meadow.  When I reported for work here this morning, the green Butternut squash left at garden's edge was gone.  Canine footprints covered one corner of my carefully prepared planting bed.  The squash was found some distance away.  Deep teeth marks pointed to its use as a chew toy by a fairly large animal.

Nearby neighbors do have two dogs.  One of them is large and they have been know to roam.  The fresh scat points more toward coyote.  Examination of the photo shows that both corn and apples were on the menu.  I have read that as life forms disappear from this planet as a result of our destruction of our home,   coyotes may be the last mammal alive.  Among their wily ways is their ability to eat almost anything.  Since my new garlic bed is part of their playground, a fence will be needed to keep them away from my plants.