Plant them now, if you can.

I haven't gotten mine in, either, and I plan to go out with my bulb auger tomorrow to plant a couple of beds. We're between storms here, and it has been warm enough for planting.

Catherine

The point of planting garlic on Columbus Day, when you should have planted, is to give time for the root system to anchor the plant and be ready to grow come March. It is really late! Isn't your ground frozen? Spring planted galic, from what I have read, does not do as well as fall planted garlic. At this point I'd wait for spring. Even if it stays warm for you the ground is cold and I doubt you'll get much root growth in such cool soil vs the temperature the soil would have been in mid October.

Tom

I always thought the same thing, Tom. Until the past few years when circumstances forced me to plant very late. Both garlic and multiplying onions. I've put them in the ground as late as January. And Martin has planted garlic as late in the year as December 31, in Wisconsin.

The only real danger, I now believe, is the possibility of un-rooted bulbs rotting during freeze/thaw cycles. But that might be a problem that's more theoretical than real. My loss rate with "winter" planting seems to be about the same as when I plant in the fall.

So, Hoorayfororganic, I say go for it. If you can work the ground at all, plant your cloves.

ground isn't frozen yet i dont think. at least not fully. roots not forming fast enough was my concern. but it seems better to plant now rather than spring. we'll see what happens i guess

well i stand corrected. gardenlad you have more experience than i with garlic. i'd have thought the ground was frozen in ky in late jan. same for wi in late dec, i'd expect wi to be frozen by thanksgiving.

if the ground is mulched (as it should be) i'd think the freeze thaw would be mitigated for the poster.

i thought that perhaps it would be more of a problem for a raw clove in such cold ground - never having grown, not having set roots, something chemical (?) might protect a clove due to clove growth like a natural antifeeze that's missing without the clove growth. but that's just speculation on my part.

give it a shot. my ground was well frozen but now that it's been very warm the top is getting soft (when i walk on the lawn). i could dig but i suspect i'd hit frozen ground an 1" down. mine is muched under 6" of shredded leaves.

tom

The latter you plant them, the smaller the heads will be at harvest time.

Jean, I'd like to see your documentation. There is no evidence I know of indicating that. In fact, the body of literature---as well as personal experience---regarding bulb-size vs. planting date indicates the opposite.

For instance, Darrel Merrill, who's grown as many as 540 varieties in one year, did an experiement in which he planted one third of a variety in Sept., one third in Oct., and the balance in November. There was no difference at all in when the plants started to regrow in the spring, or in the size of the bulbs.

Lateness of planting could, in theory at least, effect plant survival. But if the plant survives the winter dormancy, bulbing will be unaffected.

Bulbing is triggered by day length, and all takes place in only about a month. Before that, energy goes into plant growth, and, in the case of hardnecks, scape formation.

>i could dig but i suspect i'd hit frozen ground an 1" downShows you how different conditions can be. Last year my frost line barely went down an inch. Most years it's only a couple of inches; nothing like the deep frozen soils I experienced when living up north. One year the frost line went down 42 inches.

But Martin actually planted in ground that was frozen, to prove a point. I was going to replicate his experiment, but with a long run of warm days, none of my ground was actually frozen when I planted. But we did get hard frosts almost immediately afterwards.

The thing to keep in mind is that garlic is a bulb designed to go through a winter dormancy in ground that freezes hard; such as in Siberia. The bulb, itself, will freeze solid, then recover and start growing.

The danger of late planting (other than the theoretical one of rot) is that without a root structure the bulbs are likely to shift during freeze/thaw cycles. So, while you'll get a garlic plant from that clove, it might not be growing where you set it.

I just planted Russian red garlic last week. The ground was not frozen. I had previously planted a number of cloves in October but decided to test the theory and see how they do. See ya back here in July with results.

:)

I'm so confident, Peggy, that I'll set a date, right now, to help you eat them.