Garlic bulbs came out tiny for my second season, why?

last year

I've had a garlic tragedy, and I'm looking for help on what went wrong. This is my second season growing garlic. The first season, I put in very little effort, made a bunch of mistakes, and still got a lot of good bulbs. But this season, using some of the exact same garlic as seed, and trying to do everything right, I expected much better results; instead I got consistently tiny garlic heads!

Background:

Sunnyvale, CA - Zone 9b
Backyard in suburbs

The first season, that went well, despite half-assed approach:

Spring planted Feb 10
56 cloves of "Gilroy garlic" (presumably California White) from a local grocery store (and also an unknown, probably Chinese garlic that only ended up yielding "rounds")
Harvest June 19
Yielded 6 large cloves, 24 medium-small, and 7 too small, and 4 injured
Location: Ground in front of back fence of residential back yard, full sun
Soil: Hard clay dirt, top-dressed with some gross stuff from my gutters, added all-purpose slow release fertilizer
Spacing: sort of random, maybe 4" in 12" rows (with a lot of encroachment by other landscaping)

The second season, that went poorly despite loving care:

"Vernalized" in fridge Nov 5-Nov 29
Planted fall Nov 27
Varieties: Replanted Gilroy and unknown above, plus Music and Red Chesnok from "Green Mountain Garlic" in VT
Harvest June 19
Yielded a bunch of cloves about half the size I expected, very consistently across all 4 different kinds, including the largest heads/cloves that had been successful a few feet away! The Music came out the largest, but again, about half size from what I was hoping for. All of the heads were all a very consistent size, and divided into cloves, just way too small.
Location: 4x8 3' raised beds a few feet away from the old location, full sun -- that I hoped would be less shady because it was higher up
Soil: Commercial bulk raised bed mix, with some bagged soil mix and compost mixed in, and a small amount of local dirt
Spacing: 6", 5", 4", 3" (I did an experiment, see below)
There were no obvious signs of disease growing or at harvesting, except more rotting in the wrappers than there should have been.

Possible causes I've considered, in the order I think they might be related:

Watering - When harvesting, I noticed it was really pretty wet in the raised bed about 5" down. (I also forgot to stop irrigating a couple weeks before harvest.) The roots looked OK, pretty long and full, but a lot of the wrappers looked in worse condition, more rotted, than I think they should have been. So maybe it was too wet? But the first 1-3" or so were actually fairly dry.
Not enough mulch - Sort of related; I had a really thin 1/2" layer of chopped leaves as mulch. I could probably have more, and maybe that would make the moisture gradient more consistent.
Vernalization - I sort of forgot about this and ended up only vernalizing about 3.5 weeks in my fridge. I didn't vernalize at all the previous planting; but maybe the supermarket garlic had been in cold storage? Also, I thought Gilroy garlic probably shouldn't require it.
Temperature - I checked with a kitchen thermometer, and the raised beds seemed a very similar temperature to the soil I had planted the previous season. But it's possible it was a few degrees warmer on average, or warmed up faster, or something, and that was enough to impact the growing.
Spacing - Maybe even my 6" equidistant spacing was too close.. although I have reason to doubt that below
Fertilizer - I used slow-release nitrogen fertilizer pretty early on, and I noticed at harvesting that some of the granules were still intact. I wonder if I could have used too much? Also, there was tons of organic material, also possibly too much.
Soil contamination - My soil mix included 3 foreign sources, including municipal compost. That makes me really nervous, that some constituent might have had either a chemical herbicide, or some other contamination that could inhibit growth. I've also concurrently grown other things in the bed, with some successes and some failures, but I'm not really sure.
Sunlight - There's a lot of things that block sunlight at various times a day, including the row covers I had to make for the raised beds. I still feel like it's full sun, but perhaps the blockage is worse than I thought, especially in early spring months?

For the second season, I was hoping to do a little study on spacing. I planted an equal amount of the 4 varieties of garlic at 4 different spacings. I was hoping to draw some conclusions on how closely I could space plants without impacting bulb size.

Here is the result:

Spacing in in: 3 4 5 6

Gilroy 10 13 21 20

Unknown groc 14 14 18

Music - 46 56 55

Chesnok Red 21 26 36 27

(Average weight of garlic heads in grams, by inch spacing)

Because 5" and 6" spacing yielded very similar bulb sizes, I concluded that spacing was probably not the issue, and that going up to 7" or 8" wouldn't change anything. I could be drawing that wrong conclusion though.

I know this is a ton of information. Is there anything that jumps out that I might have done wrong?

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Comments (6)

cindy-6b/7a VA
last year
last modified: last year
Yes. Do not let your garlic form "heads." You need to cut them off as soon as you see them.

Also, dig your garlic once the bottom three leaves are brown.

I did not read all of your post, just looked at the photo.
robert567
last year
I don't know how to grow in your area, but the main difference between the two plantings was the time of planting, and the refrigeration.

In a cooler zone the garlic would come up in late March after Winter. Then grow in April and May and then bulb up in June. You don't have a real Winter. Maybe you confused the garlic so they didn't know what season was what. Read up on what they do in California, if you have not already done so.
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John D Zn6a PIT Pa
last year
You said: "(and also an unknown, probably Chinese garlic that only ended up yielding "rounds")"

That needs some investigation. You can't grow rounds by planting cloves or whole bulbs, I think you can only grow rounds by planting bulbils. They would be on top of a scape, however I don't know whether the Chinese garlic even produces scapes.
zeedman Zone 5 Wisconsin
last year
Re: the rotting bulb wrappers. Nearly all of the garlic leaves in the photo are brown... which if the roots were intact, means the garlic was harvested too late. For most garlic, the number of layers in the bulb wrapper is roughly equal to the number of green leaves at the time of harvest. There is some variation between different garlic types, but a good rule of thumb is to harvest when about 50% of the leaf area is brown. Earlier means slightly smaller bulbs, but better storage; later means larger bulbs, but shorter storage.

The vernalization should have been unnecessary, if the garlic was planted in November; but it likely caused no damage. I would be more suspicious of the municipal compost. I bought bulk "garden soil" one year to fill in a low spot in my garden; all the plants in that area were stunted the following year - even the weeds. It turned out that municipal compost had been used in their mix. Landscaping companies dumping treated grass can contaminate the compost.

But given the description of the plants as otherwise healthy (unless they yellowed prematurely) the smaller bulbs may just be a response to weather variations. IMO that is the most likely cause.
toxcrusadr
last year
last modified: last year
Municipal compost is usually hot composted, which should take care of the common lawn herbicides. They are much more degradable than the persistent ones that are used on hay fields.

However, the compost could have been nitrogen-robbing, for example if it had a lot of wood in it. I got a batch this year from my city compost operation and it had about 15-20% by volume small twigs and pieces of shredded wood. Garlic is a big feeder, so maybe it needed more nitrogen.

I kinda like the 'season confusion' theory though...
LoneJack Zn 6a, KC
last year
last modified: last year
I stored my seed garlic in the fridge one year to keep them in better shape for planting in October and lost about half of the planted crop. The ones that did survive were small. Of course that is in a much colder climate that does get a real winter. One winter is enough, two is one too many.

Garlic bulbs came out tiny for my second season, why?

Comments (6)

cindy-6b/7a VA

robert567

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