Allotments 4 All

As it was reduced to just yellow dead stalks.
Well, it's not that  great, mostly the heads are as big as an egg, but they seem to have split into at least a few cloves anyway. They are currently drying in the shed.

Any tips as to how to get a better harvest next year? This is the second year, so I guess it has improved, at least there are a few decent sized cloves. Maybe I need to try another variety???

I'm going to plant very early this year - hope the bulbs develop better before the rust wins. No one on our allotments has escaped it.

PS Trying to track down Spanish Roja garlic seed but it seems to have been withdrawn from the market - does anyone know about this?

Quote from: antipodes on June 18, 2008, 09:15:24

Any tips as to how to get a better harvest next year? This is the second year, so I guess it has improved, at least there are a few decent sized cloves. Maybe I need to try another variety???

to do this I think it would be a good idea to describe in detail how you are planting and looking after it and what variety used  :)

I'm in the same boat antipodes - my garlic was rubbish this year.  I bought the "selection box" from the Garlic Farm as recommended by many on this site but I think the weather conditions were against me.  I used non-named stuff last year from the garden centre and they were fantastic.  I planted up as I did last year so I really think it was just bad weather conditions to blame.  I got a few that have split but they are small bulbs. The rest just look like small onions - but I am going to use them anyway.   ;)
twinkletoes

Mine has pretty bad rust too.  Have dug about 6 up so far and two are reasonable sized - about ping pong ball sized!  Should I dig the rest up this weekend or will they still be growing?  The outer leaves are all yellow and rusty but the shoot in the middle still has some green?  They are Cristo and I planted in October.

Dug mine up too - rusty, but the bulbs weren't too bad, better than last year anyway! 

well let's see how did I plant them - I planted them in early November I think, they were bought from the farmer's market and the mother bulbs were grown locally. So I don't know the variety  ???
I seem to think that I fertilized the soil with some orgnaic fertilizing mix and they got a bit of manure in the winter, not a lot.
We had a cold spell in December and another in February and a lot of rain at the end of the winter. They got a bit of rust but only very recently.
The crop that was in that place last year was French beans.

Anything in there seem to be a no-no? I didn't give them any TLC, just let them get on with it.
Some of them are ping pong ball sized, a few a bit bigger.

I can't see anything obviously wrong about th eway Antipodes grew the garlic.

I planted around a dozen different varieties in two batches in mid October and mid November, then some more in late December and finally a planting of Solent Wight in early February (on advice of The Garlic Farm) together with some Spanish and Italian red I had left over. I planted most of them quite deeply (about the length of the clove's amount of soil above the top of the clove). Gave them all some potash of sulphur in March.

I don't think the problems are a variety issue: the last plantings have the least rust so far but that may be because they are the furthest downwind,the least developed and have a more generous spacing. Though all seem to have formed cloves, no varieties have really bulbed up well yet (I do wonder whether that's because the top few inches of soil in the beds tend to be quite dry: we're quite sandy but I don't water them.) Looking around the allotments most people seem to have  similar looking crops to me - so I suspect a combination of the weather sequence and the rust.

Was ok last year planting in much the same way but I planted them all in Christmas week.  Although most were on the small side they kept well. In fact I am just down to my last bulb from 2007 (Rossa Di Saluggia).  Perhaps I should try using it as seed?

antipodes - not sure whether the manure was at all necessary, I never feed the soil with mine and I guess you are picking them now because of the yellow, dying stalks otherwise they would have been left awhile to get bigger - i reckon it is probably been too dry and that's the reason  :-\

Mine are still in looking increasingly unhappy but I'll give them a bit of water and  liquid  seaweed to see if they will live long enough to bulb up. Luckily the rust doesn't seem to affect any of the other plants, not even the onions.

Same as you Antipodes, I dug mine up yesterday too. They had fallen over and got badly rusted, they vary from small to ping pong ball size. Though they do have a few cloves each. Not a brilliant harvest, mine were planted in Oct.

I think mine dont get quite enough sunlight ::)

i gotmine from the IOW garlic farm
dug a little patch on my brand new (to me) lotty
and planted it
dug it up this week
awesome, they are drying in my shed there are 4 that are small
the rest are bigger than anything i have ever got from tescos
I'm very happy

lbb

So did I llb - but was not as lucky as you.  I'm sure it was weather conditions that messed it up for me. Oh well, next year.........
twinkletoes

Perhaps I'd better start lifting mine. I bought the selection box from The Garlic Farm, too. I was weeding the bed yesterday - the weeds were happy & healthy, so I must have done right by the soil! - and they looked good to me. Perhaps I'd better investigate what's below the surface.

Last year's harvest, on the other hand, was the pits....

Well I'm still eating last year's harvest but like yours,Trevor, it was not very good - small roots and not pungent enough for me. I'm hoping this year's will be bigger and stronger.

I think I will just plant 'Marco' to overwinter this year after I had the best harvest from this variety despite some rust. 'Christo' and 'Germidor' did not get close in size despite all being planted at the same time ...... :-\

I agree the weather has a lot to do with it - my stuff was rubbish last year as the dry April encouraged rust and then we got that awful wet May/June - so all the bulbs small. This year no rust (yet) and leaves still green and growing well so I'll leave them for a bit. The last time they stayed green this long I had mammoth bulbs and big fat cloves so fingers crossed  :-\

TWINKLETOES
The garlic that looks like small onions can be put back in the ground in the autumn and they will make a good bulb next year.

hmmm well maybe it does just depend on the weather conditions then. The winter was quite dry here and then in May it rained a lot. Maybe that was the reason. Is there any stage in their development when it would help to give them extra water??
perhaps once they have dried out I will be able to have a better perspective on whether or not they are rubbish. I mean I have still got quite a bit of garlic from teh harvest but I thoughthe heads would have been bigger.

Yeah, think only the luck ones have had good crops, mine were also poor last year..............or am I just a poor gardener? I hope not :'(