Very nice, I would guess usually planting garlic is the finale of your garden season but it sounds like you still have some other things going. It looks like you got a nice rain overnight to water in those cloves. Your long range forecast doesn't show anything below 40 until Oct 22 so your garlic should have plenty of time to set roots before the ground freezes. Also 80 degrees predicted for this Sunday!! Record? I remember growing up in Brooklyn Park and going trick or treating with snow on the ground.

I wouldn't call 4x18 of garlic not much...I guess you could get close to 250 in that space. I have plenty of garden here and I'm only planting a little over 200 this year.

I'm going to start planting this weekend myself just to spread it out a bit. A 4 by 4 bed of French red and Dutch Yellow Shallots and then a 3x3 bed of German White garlic.

Next weekend I will plant the rest of the garlic in 2 4x10 beds. All were saved from this years harvest.

25 German White

25 Music

30 Purple Glazer

15 Chesnok Red

15 Estonia Red

5 Siberian

10 Metechi

15 Russian Red

10 Yugoslavian

30 Spanish Roja

10 Martin's Old Heirloom

Looks like we might well escape killing frosts until into November this year. Last year it was past the middle of October when I planted my garlic and it did real well. This year I am a little earlier.

I still have a set of walking onion bulbils to plant out for spring green onions, which I intend to have out before planting sweet potatoes and butterbush squash in that space. I may also even try some radishes yet.

The big job I would like to get done yet this fall is preparation of a couple more beds for spring planting. Three I think actually. Things just seem to work better in the spring when the beds are set up and prepared in the fall. That allows heavy fertilization to mellow as well.

I just got word that my last seed garlic has been shipped. Probably get here Saturday or Monday. These will be Asiatics and Turbans in some combination; it will be fun to see what Southern Exposure includes. I already have Japanese which does real well for me. Except for the grocery store pair, the rest are my own bulbs going into their fifth year now. Third year on the feral and it is starting to size up pretty impressively considering the plants are not large, way smaller than Music or Siberian and even smaller than Viet Namese Red, although the bulbs are starting to match that later for size, and with fewer cloves the cloves are very nearly as big as the VN Red, too. More early garlic will allow me to double crop more of my limited space. Gonna have to go a ways to replace my Music though.

My garlic will be planted in a couple of weeks. Today I worked in my daughter's garden. She lives 3 states away and we're visiting for her birthday. I "rescued" an overgrown garden area and planted some walking onions for her. Gotta get her hooked on growing them!

Sounds like both of you have good sized garlic patches with lots of varieties. Don't think I'll be putting in quite as many as you.

I'll need to wait for the killing frost, then clean all my garden bed, peppers & tomatoes, then plant garlic. During the mean time, I'm cleaning my last year's garlic beds. I have a lot to plant this year.

This is the latest in my memory ever that I have planted. Have two big beds done and three 18" containers. At least 5 beds and as many more 18" containers left to go!

Last year we did not have enough cold weather for the hardneck garlic to bulb up. I did get some from the German Extra Hardy, but Music was a huge disappointment. At first I thought it was caused by the droughty conditions, but after talking to some other garlic growers who had the same problem I figured that it was the lack of chill. The softneck, otoh, were unconcerned about the lack of winter and were ready a month earlier than I can recall.

I went ahead and planted all of my Garlic (206) and Shallots (36). I got on a role and couldn't stop. The only change I made was replacing the Martin's Heirloom with Persian Star. The largest bulbs of Martin's that I intended to plant had become somewhat desiccated and the smaller bulbs I had were getting soft also. All of the other Rocambole types were still in good shape. I had completely forgot to allocate room for the Persian Star anyway,

I also peeled, sliced and dehydrated 6 or 7 dozen cloves from the seed bulbs that didn't make the cut for planting which should be enough to make a couple cups of garlic powder this winter.

My garlic went in late this year, since I was in the process of transferring the garlic bed to a different property. The previous location was too prone to flooding, and had poor drainage; my artichoke garlics don't appreciate wet feet in the Spring, and have done very poorly the last two years. The good news: the new site is well drained. The bad news: it was new ground, and I broke ground too late to kill off all of the grass. Weeding will be a struggle next year.

Fortunately, the weather has been exceptionally beautiful for this time of year, so I was able to finish planting today:

• Bulgarian Hanuan (art)
• Bogatyr (mps)
• Broadleaf Czech (mps)
• Chinese Rocambole (roc)
• Choparsky (mps)
• Chrysalis Purple (roc)(planted at home)
• Estonian Red (mps)
• Georgian Fire (porc)
• German Extra Hardy (porc)
• German Red (roc)
• German White (porc)
• Jurjevich (roc)
• Kettle River Giant (art)
• Korean Mad Dog (art)
• Krasnodar Red (mps)
• L.K. Mann's C751 (roc)
• Martin's Heirloom (?)
• Mchadidzhvari (art)
• Old Homestead (roc)
• Pearly Red (roc)
• Persian Star (ps)
• Polish Jenn (porc)
• Pskem (mps)
• Purple Cauldron (appears to be art)
• Ron's Single Center (art)
• Russian Red (roc)
• Sicilian Gold (art)
• Simoneti (art)
• Special Idaho (roc)
• Transylvanian (art)
• Unknown hardneck (sent to me as Bogatyr, but it is not)
• Vic's (roc)
• White Seedless (art)
• Xi'an (turb)
• an unknown volunteer which popped up in my bunching onions?

Also Pearlzweibel, two root multiplier onions, and one walking onion (McCullar's).

Two opportunities to grow bulbils presented themselves, and I am taking advantage of them. This year I observed a large number of garlic scapes growing in the field adjacent to my rural garden, with bulbils pea sized & larger. In the past I had thrown cut off scapes there, and bulbs which appeared diseased... it appears that some of those took hold, and naturalized. Since those plants predate the Aster Yellows which wiped out all of my garlic in 2012 - and survived it - I am interested in growing some of them.

The other opportunity was the silver lining to a dark cloud. While all of my artichoke garlic did poorly this year, they reacted to the overly wet Spring by producing stem bulbils in large numbers... on every plant for some varieties. Artichoke garlic rarely produces bulbils, so this is a chance too good to pass up. It is possible that plants grown from those bulbils will - in future years - be healthier than their parents.

Impressive list!! Many of them I've never heard of. Sounds like you are getting back to normal after the 2012 AY. The first few times I grew chokes I always got about 25% that grew stem bulbils but the type was always California late. This last season I grew out a dozen or so Lorz Italian and none of them had the stem bulbils and it was also a very wet spring here.

I thought Martin's was a Rocambole but you are indicating that you are not sure. I grew some last season that I purchased from Fillaree Farm and was not impressed at all. The plants were much smaller than any other in my garden and I think the biggest bulb was maybe 1.5" with most around 1". I was going to give Martin's one more try this year but when I went to crack open the bulbs I saved for planting most of the cloves had already started browning and had turned soft. I scratched the Martin's and replaced with some Persian Star that also did poorly in my garden last year. How does Martin's do for you?

In previous years, I had a few stem bulbils on my artichokes, but they were small, and some varieties had none at all. This year all artichokes had some bulbils, some varieties close to 100%... and many of those were fairly large. One variety even had a high percentage of multiple clusters, and the bulbils on those were larger than most of what I've seen on my hardnecks! It is a golden opportunity to clean up any diseases which may be getting passed along on the bulb stock, which could result in a higher yield if/when the stock grown from the bulbils is large enough to replace them.

Martin's has yet to do well for me, and has fallen far short of its reputation. It has been gradually getting larger, though, as did most of my garlic this year. There is some question in my mind as to whether this garlic is really Martin's, since the source has since gone off line, and has not answered any of my correspondence. One more year, and I will either give up on it, or get new stock directly from Martin & start over.

Persian Star (a.k.a. Samarkand) did reasonably well this year, and is one of my more reliable performers regardless of conditions. The bulbs are not among the largest even in the best years, but it can be crowded a little in terms of spacing, and I like the large number of cloves. It gives me one of the best increases by weight, since I only need to save 10-15% for replanting, and can eat the rest. Not my favorite for flavor or ease of peeling, but if I could grow only one garlic for subsistence, Persian Star would be among the best choices.

In good years, the artichokes will out-produce the hardnecks... but they are temperamental, and suffer the most from less than ideal conditions. My last good year with artichokes was 2011, just before the AY outbreak. The soil in my new garlic site is well drained & fertile, I'm hopeful that the artichokes will do better. It will probably take them another year to size up to where they were previously. Ron's is one of my favorites for flavor, and has pretty uniform clove size... it doesn't get the tiny interior cloves of many artichokes.

I see few bulbils in the few softnecks I plant. Softnecks don't do well for me anyway, but there are quite a few bulbils in my Japanese, an Asiatic. In the Japanese they actually seem like aborted attempts to scape and the resulting bulbils though few are huge. My Japanese have produced very few true scapes. They are also proving to be the last to emerge this fall, nearly everything else are showing enough to be rowable.

The two supermarket stocks I planted about a month ago, came right up and now stand some 8 to 10 inches high already. The Turbans I planted about a week later are also all up and they stand 4 to 6 inches. Even the Music, Viet Namese Red, Siberian and the feral are showing some tips poking through. The bulbil beds are not showing much at all yet. The mid October planting of walking onions and of sand leeks are both showing through, especially the walking onions.

And the summer planting of feral cloves is still very green and seems to be showing no sign of dividing into cloves. Interestingly that bed is showing two types of plants, one with thin stems and one with thick. The thin stemmed ones are producing nice singleton bulbs, some up to almost an inch and a quarter in diameter. IOW very large rounds, way bigger by multiple times of the tiny cloves I initially planted last June. The thicker stems have much less bulbing almost better described as garlic scallions. Neither has shown an indication of either scapes nor of dividing into cloves. I dug about a quarter of the bed today to have a look and that is what I found. Next spring will tell how the rest winter and what they do then.

It has been a long, relatively mild autumn here in Minnesota.

FWIW I also planted some radish seed, both spring and daikon in mid-October, it all came up but I sorta doubt it will make, although there are many true leaves already. We shall see what we shall see.

I think someone said this winter's weather forecasting was cold and early. So he planted his garlic very early. Then we have a later winter like this.

I planted all my garlic very late since I did not like October planting (Zone 6). In total, I planted about 1,200 garlic cloves and 1,400 bulbils. I believe I have 8 varieties, all hard neck.

The bulbils beds are quiet. But my new garlic beds are doing great. Some of the garlic plants are about 2-3" tall.

It has turned out to be a late and quite mild autumn here in Minneapolis. We finally have a bit of snow cover, but it should be gone by weekend or early next week. My garlics range from just poking through to nearly 10" tall depending on the variety. Normally I like planting my garlics here in the north country fair from early to mid October. This year with the huge El Nino we seem to be much milder than normal.

I have a number of varieties that I like and that do well, but I am extremely dissatisfied with the California Early that I harvested in June. This was a first time batch, and I intended to replant almost all of it this fall. I tried a couple heads of it not long after harvest, and it is fine, but it is the only variety that almost none of it made it to late October for replanting. That is just not acceptable. Heck, I still have a decent amount of Spanish White(not huge heads always, but each individual clove is a good size) harvested a year-and-a-half ago, still in great shape and being used in the kitchen. Every other variety was also in great shape for planting. I guess what I'm saying is that California Early is just not a keeper!!

My main garlic bed grows to just about 2" tall, perfect for me, just as planned. My bulbil beds have just start to pop out.

Here is my my main bed. Most of rounds, and some are cloves.

Its looking like a mild winter this year. I hope all my,hardnecks will get the needes vernalization. But I also hope my artichokes and fig trees will survive. So far the zone 6 is a zone 8. Some flower bulbs even started coming up due to the spring-like christmas.

I do not worry about winter chilling. We have got plenty of cold weather for garlic. Only one of my blueberry bushes sent out a few flowers. Fruit trees are doing just fine. Some daffodils pop out a couple of inches, which I've seen before.

We still have some winter left...

zeedman, how many garlic heads did you plant this season?

I counted mine, total 1,500 cloves and 1,500 bulbils. I'm sure some of them will not make it. I'll be happy with 80% harvest rate.

All for personal use. Giving away to friends....

Our winter chill is certainly sufficient already Last weekend it got down below -10 a couple of nights. The ground is frozen and the lakes are too; so this is the time when Minnesotans can all walk on water, and many of us do just that. :)

We have a bit of snow cover, but you have to go south to the Iowa border to see much accumulation. With the snow albedo it is often warmer by a few degrees north of the snow belt if there is more open ground there, which is where we are this year again - north of winter...

Dutch. I bet all of the folks up there are going bonkers because they can't get out on their snow machines but I imagine if they go up to the north woods there might be enough snow. I guess they can still take them out onto the frozen lakes though.

We have had a few nights in the mid single digits with a couple more coming this weekend but we are supposed to hit 50 degrees today and 55 tomorrow which is a nice break. My Brussels Sprouts finally succumbed to the cold without really producing much more than marble sized sprouts. My garlic and shallots are still green and don't show any signs of freeze damage yet but still at least a month to go before they start to send out new growth. I do have 3" tall leeks and bunching onions growing in the basement as well as my indoor lettuce garden to keep me sane. Only about 6 weeks left before I can start some more of the cool weather stuff but I might have to bump the plan up a bit if spring looks to be coming early like in 2012.

lol Never been on a snow mobile and likely never will. When I fish the ice, I walk on, usually on city park lakes where the snow mobiles aren't allowed anyway. It is forecast that we get down lower than 15 below before the month is out. Now I don't like the cold all that much, but if that is all the colder it gets, then we will have had a relatively mild winter. We are supposed to average some a minimum of -25 every winter, but recently that has moderated something like 5-10 degrees.

To get machine depth snow we actually have to go south to the Iowa border. They have been getting nailed once again this year. There is a band between I90 in southern Minnesota and US 18 in northern Iowa that has been getting heavy snow for some years and with it enough change in albedo to have a few degrees colder than just north where the snow cover is more patchy. If anybody is going to get accumulations of snow it seems like the I90 corridor gets it first and gets the most. Tomorrow is supposed to get almost up to freezing here. I'll take that for sure. Every such day brings May one day closer.

Funny you should mention Brussels sprouts. I used to grow them and as fall came on I would leave two plants standing in the snow banks. One I would dig out for Thanksgiving and the other for Christmas. They were just fine, although like yours my sprouts tended to be rather small. A couple of years ago, my sister in NW Iowa (similar 4a zone) had one of her Brussels sprouts survive the winter in the ground and then the sprouts all went to bloom the next spring. Quite a sight.

Interesting. I left the 3 Brussels Sprouts plants out in the garden. They still have some sprouts on them that were too small to pick at Christmas but I assumed they had turned to mush by now. I'll have to go out and look at them a little closer this afternoon. They are mulched with a few inches of chopped leaves so maybe they are still alive? I have peppers planned for that bed this year so the BS can use the space until May or so. Maybe I will get to see them bloom before then!

I have BS still hanging on barely. Not really any sprouts left worth picking, but I did pick some this month