Tom, glad you got a plan in place! I don't yet! I have 9 varieties plus Elephant from last year that I'll probably replant the largest from--Music, Siberian, Spanish Roja, Martin's, German Extra Hardy, Simonetti, Georgian Crystal, Inchelium Red, etc. I also picked up some others from the guy on ebay, though I was a little disappointed in the size--most are around 2'' to 2.25'' and a few may even be smaller. I haven't actually measured yet. Someone else posted in another thread about him, it's the same person I got many of mine from last year, he must be keeping the big stuff for replanting himself. Or it could be cost related--maybe you get what you pay for...99 cents for 3 bulbs. I got the following:

Russian Giant (3)
Leningrad (3)
Red Toch/Tochliavri (3)
Polish Hardneck (3)
Metechi (3)
Korean Red (1) (traded Grub's Mystery Green)

I also traded with Neo in OH some Olive Hill & other mater seeds for 1 bulb of Bogatyr and an unknown hardneck.

Last but definitely not least, Suze sent me many Creole & Asiatic & Turban types to see if they'll get established here. Thanks again Suze!

Unlike me, but yesterday I drove 85 miles roundtrip (17mpg!) and bought 50lb bags of cornmeal, corn gluten meal (2), dried molasses, and [crushed? ground?] oyster shells. Depending on the weather I should have much of the "pumpkin patch" cleared out & weeded by the end of the week, will have to go get another load of compost, and ammend that bed with the compost, molasses, oyster shells, etc, and put down some corn gluten as a weed preventative for any weed seeds that shattered while cleaning the spot. Still no frost yet though lows in the 40's the next 5-7 days.

I will try to plant that 3x8' bed with garlic again, 6 inch spacing, plus a strip on the the south end and west side of the pumpkin patch along the drip irrigation lines which have shutoff valves to cut off the water without taking water away from the pumpkin. I figure by the time the pumpkin vines grow 20-25 feet to interfere with the garlic, the garlic will be ready to pull anyways.

I will probably cut back on maters a little more in 2008 and try planting some of my hardiest garlic varieties in some of those containers & maybe 'Mater Mountain on the driveway, plus maybe some at location #2 in the 'burbs. Still nothing drawn up yet. I still have to harvest the remaining lettuce & sugar snap peas in the 3x8' bed & ammend it.

Hopefully I'll have everything done in the next week or 2.

Mark

mark,

oh yes you are correct, people always save the best (ie biggest) cloves on their bulbs for their replanting. there's no way they'd sell you their best seed stock!

i'm confused about your corn gluten comments. weeds that sprout will die when frost or winter comes and once the ground freezes you mulch the garlic with 4-6" of whatever you use and then remove all mulch but 1" in the spring. this will keep the weeds down. i pulled very few weeds in the 4' X 12' garlic bed but the 4' X 12' onion bed that i do not mulch requires a lot of weeding until about 6/21 when the onions are tall and shade the soil cutting down on weeds. so i wouldn't use the corn gluten now on the garlic and save it for somewhere else, unless i am missing something.

off topic for mark, you'd never believe the huge amount of good sized dr. lyle tomatoes i picked monday afternoon! the warmth was ending (85-90 for 2 weeks) and rain with heavy clouds for the next week+ so this was it for ripening. i picked some other varietiess but about 15-20 dl. my kitchen table looks like it did on aug 5th!!!!!!! most non cherries now are sour so no idea how the dl will be but they were getting really pink before i picked them and they look beautiful on the table so i expect fairly good flavor. up to now recently picked tomatoes i put on the table would get bad spots but these look perfect. if all these are good, i have about 15 or 20 pounds of dl tomatoes to eat! i really am sick of tomatoes!!! next year i am planting just 4 varieties (and that means 4 plants) but maybe i'll put 2 prue into 1 crw cage having a total of 5 plants. prue could allow that as it's so sparse i think 2 would work!

tom

Tom, I think that if someone is publicly selling garlic for planting purposes, it should be large... maybe not the absolute biggest of the harvest, but still very large. I can see him keeping his absolute largest to replant, of course... but the stuff I harvested here in July, even from some leftover loose runt cloves, were bigger than some I received. Therefore the thoughts that if the winning bid was more than $0.33 each, maybe they would have been bigger? These were different varieties than I bought from him last year, but last year's seemed bigger.

As for the corn gluten meal, we really don't know if the weeds are annuals or perennials, they may have blown in or even survived thru finished compost. Some is crabgrass, others I've never seen before here, not that I remember anyway.

I think the soil temp is warm enough for weeds to germinate still, and I couldn't get back there to weed so everything went to seed... and yanking & raking & everything probably spread seeds everywhere. So they still may germinate this year, plus next year. Also, I don't have any mulch, unless I use compost that I pay for... no grass here... maybe some leaves in another month. I personally have never mulched my garlic here.

The corn gluten I think recommended app rate is around 10-20lbs per 1000 sq ft--the entire pumpkin patch is only around 250-300. You usually apply 2x per year. It's effectiveness increases each year you reapply it. I think it starts out in the 60-70% range the first app and handles about a dozen or more weeds (crabgrass, dandelion, etc.) The list is on Wikipedia I think. This should last me a pretty long time, or I can always put it on ebay in 10lb bags ;-) Plus, it acts as a fertilizer, around 9 or 10-0-0.

For tomatoes, my Dr. Lyle is about done except for a few large green ones near the top, but still have many other varieties still producing. I only pulled 1 determinate plant. Next year I will devote more time & space on my own crosses/breeding. Of course I don't think I can get away with just 5! Plus you sent me 2 to grow, thanks. But I probably won't grow 12 different cherries like usual. I grew maybe 80 varieties of maters and spent sooooo much time saving seeds for ebay, and peeling & dicing tomatoes for Annie's Salsa (41 pints or so canned), that I think I only actually sat down and ate about 5 full tomatoes all year! And just 1 or 2 BLT's! We did do 8 gallons of puree with the Spremy too. Matter of fact, I STILL didn't get to save seeds from every one of the 80+ varieties this year yet! The smell of rotting split tomatoes that now look like seed "sacs" is making me sick!

Today I did maybe 4 varieties of peppers--many drying in the oven to grind plus just got done preparing 15 Billy Ogden's stuffed hot peppers (mozz/parm/cream cheese/garlic/etc.) Pepper plants are still loaded--have to find more uses for them!

Mark

The bulbs of my 2007 harvest were small. I'll plant the biggest cloves, but I don't know.

So far this year I've planted Spanish Roja, Georgia Crystal, Killarney Red, Polish Hardneck, and Persian Star. That barely makes a dent in what I have yet to plant. I think I rather overbought. :-) I want to set up another raised bed if I can get some bagged soil home.

The squirrels have been digging up and stealing half the garlic I plant. I planted the Spanish Roja today and sprayed liberally with hot pepper wax. Hopefully that will help.

The squirrels have also been digging up and stealing my newly planted iris, my potatoes, and my broccoli.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate squirrels?

Lilacs, don't you drive? You could rent a trailer cheap and buy a load of compost or manure... or some 3.8cf bales of pro-mix (they are compressed & expand about 2x.) It still may come out cheaper than getting it delivered...

Mark

Mark,

I planted a small bed I have on October 2. The Bogatyr, got 6 nice cloves out of it and I planted 15 of the regular hardneck the same day. A couple of the Bogatyrs are poking up through the soil this morning.

I planted the rest this morning, another 105 cloves of the regular hardneck. A total of 126 planted. I didn't want to wait too long to plant like I did last year.

I amended the beds with rabbit manure, composted chicken manure, coffee grounds, some organic fert I came across called Numus and Plant Tone. I put a little of the Numus into the planting hole and I scratched the Plant Tone into the top of the soil. Hoping for some big heads next year.

No, don't drive. So obviously don't have a vehicle. I've been hauling home bagged soil for the raised beds one bag at a time, which is a real pain in the backside.

Dan, I finished ammending my pumpkin patch area but I still didn't draw any diagrams yet of what's going where--I will cut back on tomatoes next year a little but now am considering not growing AG pumpkins for a year to plant garlic there... I will be planting both varieties you sent me but I have a lot to plant and like to draw up a diagram first. I may move things around a bit, maybe onions where the corn was, corn & garlic where the pumpkin was, etc, so this may get complicated & take a while!

LILACS, it's always cheaper buying in bulk than by the bag. Next cheapest is buying in bales instead of bags. I would look for a friend or neighbor with a truck, offer him some $ or dinner to get a load, or else have him pick up some compressed bales for you. It would still come out cheaper than having it shipped, or cheaper than going with many bags.

I don't know your situation there (age, physical ability or handicaps, location, ruralness, etc), or how you get around, shop, etc, but wherever you go, try to find someone and [carefully] approach them and ask if they can help you. Some places do deliver if large enough qty is purchased, and if you find places that sell topsoil in bulk, there's a chance they sell compost in bulk, and they usually deliver. It is however much cheaper if you had someone like a neighbor or relative with a pickup truck (bulk compost) or an SUV (bales of proMix, peat, etc.)

Around here, I think a couple cubic yards of topsoil, compost, or a blend of both, would run $60-$80 delivered. Even Home Depot sells it bulk thru another company. Call a landscaping company in the phonebook, they often have or deliver compost, topsoil, wood mulch, etc. Around here, it's cheaper for me to drive to the suburbs and get a yard or two of compost loaded into a pickup for under $15-$20. A cubic yard would fill a 3ft x 9ft raised bed about a foot deep. Most bagged stuff is 40-50lbs and maybe 1 to 2 cubic feet--you'd need to buy 15 to 27 bags to fill the same bed.

Also try livestock feed stores for bulk fertilizers like alfalfa meal, soybean meal, dried molasses, etc. They may deliver too. If all else fails, try to find a farmer to deliver a load of old aged manure. Try placing an ad on craigslist.org for help wanted or in the barter or wanted section... maybe you can trade veggies or garlic or whatever for someone providing or hauling the ammendments for you. I placed an ad for someone to install a faucet in exchange for heirloom tomatoes/peppers/garlic and had almost a dozen takers!

Hope this helps. E-mail me thru My Page if you need more help.

Mark