Workhorse Crops for December

Multicolored chard from our hoophouse.
Photo Wren Vile

We’ve entered the colder half the year for this monthly series of 14 Workhorse Crops: asparagus, beans, cabbage, carrots, chard, collards/kale, garlic, potatoes, sweet corn, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, watermelons, winter squash, zucchini/summer squash. These crops are reliable under a wide range of conditions.

I hope this blogpost series will help you become more productive and profitable (if selling) as you go into winter. Maybe you gardened for the first time this year, or expanded production in spring (orders to seed companies suggest many people did!) Maybe you have less time at home than you expected when you started planting in spring. Winter brings a natural opportunity to reconsider the size of your garden, your crops, and your methods.

You can use the search box to find previous month’s entries, such as November.

Workhorse Crops to Plant in December

If you are in a warmer climate than our zone 7a, you may still have the chance to plant garlic. See Workhorse Crops for November.

Garlic scallions

We could still plant garlic scallions in December. See Garlic Scallions and October’s Workhorse Crops post for information about planting garlic scallions (baby garlic plants).

Garlic scallions can be grown at many times of year. This is news to many of us! By planting later it is possible to extend the garlic scallion harvest period out later. It is important to plant them in conditions where they can grow some good roots before getting too cold. Roots can grow whenever the soil is not frozen. Tops grow whenever the air is above 40°F (4.5°C) Planting in a hoophouse in November or December could possibly provide earlier garlic scallions then planting outdoors in early November. Because the plants are growing faster in warmer conditions. I have not tried this myself yet.

Bulb formation and drying down of bulb garlic is controlled by daylength, but because you do not need bulbing and drying down, all sorts of dates are possible!

Potato Onions

We could plant small and medium-sized potato onions outdoors in December. We have usually also prepared a bed and mulched it with hay, to plant the small potato onions in January. Click the links to get the details.

Hoophouse workhorse crops to plant in December

In the hoophouse we now have all the space fully planted. We intend to do this by November 20 each year, or earlier. We are starting to plant a second round of crops, mostly successions of greens and radishes. We have already pulled our first radishes (which sound like they are sneaking their way into being classified as a workhorse crop!)

Unusually, this fall, we found ourselves with some open space during October and November. I am pulling together information on fast crops we could grow in future years, before the late November and early December crops.

Once we have our hoophouse fully planted, we replace any crop we harvest, keeping all the space fully used. See November’s information on Follow-On Crops, and Filler Greens (short rows of greens sown in October to fill unexpected spaces.

Vates kale – our winter outdoor favorite.
Photo Bridget Aleshire

Workhorse Crops to Harvest in December

We can still have plentiful quantities of workhorse crops to harvest outdoors: cabbage, carrots, chard, kale and collards, and also luscious hoophouse greens. Only four of our 14 workhorse crops can be harvested outdoors in December, but the quantities are good, and we have the Racehorse Crop, spinach, too

We had our first frost of 2021 on November 3 – our latest first frost in the past fifteen years (approximately) has been November 15 2019.

Cabbage We harvest fall-planted cabbage from September 25 until November 30, or perhaps early December in milder years. Deadon (105d winter cabbage) is extremely cold hardy – we leave it outdoors until nights threaten to hit 10°F (-12°C), the lowest temperature I’ve seen it survive.

Carrots can be harvested in December, if we didn’t finish the job in November and we don’t want to risk feeding voles by leaving the carrots in the ground over the winter.

Chard can still be harvested outdoors if we covered it with hoops and rowcover. The outdoor killing temperature for unprotected Bright Lights chard is 22°F (–6°C); red chard survives down to 15°F (–9.5°C) and green chard to 10°F (–12°C). We have succeeded in keeping chard alive outdoors right through the winter, if we cover it. This year, we have abandoned it, as we ate so much chard through the summer and got tired of it! The chard did very well, and we lacked other summer greens like stored spring cabbages, and fall broccoli.

Alabama Blue collards.
Credit Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Collards and Kale can be lightly harvested in December. Our mnemonic for sustainable harvesting of leafy greens is “8 for later”, meaning we leave at least eight inner leaves when harvesting the outer ones, to ensure the plants have enough strength to regrow. Chard and senposai do OK with only 6 leaves left.

Hoophouse chard in December.
Photo Wren Vile

Hoophouse Workhorse harvests in December

We have started harvesting our hoophouse Bright Lights chard in small amounts, cutting the leaves into ribbons, and chopping the colorful stems, for salad mixes.

The Red Russian and White Russian kales are usually ready from early December. This year we suffered from poor germination (old seed!) and the later resows are still too small. We have plenty of other greens to eat, from outdoors, and the hoophouse senposai is on its second round of harvests, just one week after the first.

Workhorse Crops from storage in December

Storage crops start to come into their own in December as outdoor growth slows down. Besides the Workhorse Crops of carrots, potatoes, sweet potatoes, winter squash and garlic, there are many root crops. See my posts Root Crops for the Month. Use hardneck garlic first, as it stores for only for 4-6 months. Softneck garlic can store for up to 7 months.

Know your winter squash! Use the ones with the shortest storage life first (and any damaged squash that won’t store longer). Acorn and other pepo types of winter squash store for 1-4 months; Maximas such as Cha Cha, Jarrahdale and Kabochas store for 3-5 months; Moschatas such as Butternuts and Cheese pumpkins will store for 8 months or even more. Seminole pumpkin can easily store for a whole year at room temperature.

Our white potatoes were sorted two weeks after the harvest. This one sorting makes a lot of difference to the quality and quantity of potatoes we will be able to eat. After two weeks, very little further rotting starts up. We cool the root cellar down to 50F after the first month, then to 40F, airing once a week (or less if cooling is not needed).

Sweet potatoes stored in off-duty wood seed flats.
Credit Nina Gentle

Our sweet potatoes are fully cured and delicious. We grow 4 kinds: Georgia Jet and Beauregard in roughly equal amounts, to hedge our bets; and two unnamed varieties we call Bill Shane’s White and Jubilee, in small quantities simply to preserve the genetic diversity. Georgia Jet is a bit faster (90 days compared to 100 days) and usually yields a little better for us than Beauregard. Some New York growers report problems with Georgia Jet due to soft rots and malformed roots. Most growers really like this variety. Beauregard has light rose, red-orange or copper skin, dark orange flesh, uniformly shaped roots. Georgia Jet has a skin that is red-purple. I sometimes find the roots hard to tell apart when we have accidentally mixed them.

Garlic shoots poking through the mulch.
Photo Pam Dawling

Workhorse Crops Special Topics for December

One task for us this month is to Free Trapped Garlic Shoots

14-16 days after planting, when we can see that more than half of the shoots have emerged, we free any garlic shoots trapped under particularly thick clumps of mulch. We investigate the spots where there should be a plant but isn’t. Ours are planted 5” (13 cm) apart. If we find garlic tops, we simply leave part of them exposed to the light. They will sort themselves out. We don’t leave any soil exposed, because we don’t want weeds to grow. This needs to be a fast-moving, efficient task, as there are thousands of plants. It’s also important to be patient and optimistic, and not start this job too early. The goal is to free the shoots that wouldn’t make it out unaided. Not to prematurely expose them all.

In December we continue Planning, including insurance crops. We calculate how much seed to buy, browse the catalogs, balancing trying different varieties on a small scale, and largely sticking to known successful varieties. See my recent post Reading Between the Lines in the Seed Catalogs. We hope to get our seed orders placed before the end of December. Since the Covid pandemic, lots more people have started growing food. This has led to some seed shortages. So if your heart is set on certain crops or certain varieties, order early to avoid disappointment. And to spread out the massive workload that the people working packing and shipping your seeds are dealing with. Appreciate them!

Workhorse Crops for October

The crew working on the sweet potato harvest.
Photo McCune Porter

This is another episode in my monthly series of 14 Workhorse Crops. These crops are reliable under a wide range of conditions. We’re several months into this series, so here’s the complete list: asparagus, beans, cabbage, carrots, chard, collards/kale, garlic, potatoes, sweet corn, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, watermelons, winter squash, zucchini/summer squash.

I hope to help you become more efficient, productive and profitable (if selling) as you deal with another strange year. Maybe you are not at home as much as last year, or maybe your helpers have gone back to school, but you deeply appreciate sustainably grown food. You still want to garden, even with less time at home. You can use the search box to find previous month’s entries, such as September.

Workhorse Crops to Plant in October

In October in central Virginia we only have enough remaining good growing conditions outdoors to plant 3 of our 14 Workhorse crops – we can still transplant chard, collards and kale. A big step down from last month’s 8. We could also plant some garlic scallions (the soil is still too warm for us to plant garlic, but if you are in a colder zone than us, you’ll want to see this post.)

In October here, outdoor gardening is more focused on harvesting and less on planting. In contrast, October is our busiest planting month in the hoophouse! In September we direct sowed our first hoophouse bed, and sowed other crops in an outdoor nursery seedbed. Two to four weeks later, in October, we transplant them in the hoophouse. Workhorse crops getting transplanted into our hoophouse in October include Red and White Russian Kales, Bright Lights chard, and Napa Chinese cabbage. This year we are trying some carrots (actually we sowed those in September). We have plenty of other crops that don’t qualify as workhorses too!

Chard:

Swiss chard can be sown outdoors here in September, and transplanted early in October for an early winter harvest, with the option of overwintering under rowcover to provide harvests during the winter. We could direct sow chard in September and protect it for the winter, for a late winter and early spring harvest. Remember that red chard is more cold-hardy than the multi-colored types, and green chards tend to be even more hardy.

For hoophouse winter harvest, we sow Bright Lights chard in our nursery seedbed September 15 and transplant it October 16. We love the beauty of the multi-colored chard mixes, both growing and after harvest, and we have found that the hoophouse protects the crop well enough that it does not die, even without inner rowcover (unless the outdoor temperature is forecast to be below 8°F (-13°C).

Collards

This is rather late for us to transplant collards outdoors, but if we need to, and we have some good thick rowcover, we’ll do it. The extra warmth of the rowcover will help it make up for lost time.

Kale

Our last date for sowing Vates kale outdoors is 10/30. We can still transplant August-sown kale to fill gaps if we need to – see August’s post. Because kale makes some growth whenever the temperature is above about 40°F (5°C), it is a valuable winter crop. Our sunnier winter days are often warm enough for kale (and spinach!) to make some growth. We will sow more kale in late January, to give us a spring crop.

In the hoophouse we grow both the White Russian and the slightly smaller Red Russian kale. See the explanation about the merits of Oleracea and Napus kales. We make sure to transplant the shorter red kale on the south side of the bed, so it gets adequate light, with the white kale on the north. You may have noticed that red and purple-leaved vegetables grow slower and tend to be smaller than their green cousins. This is because they have less green! Green leaves are needed for photosynthesis, which enables plants to grow. Green plants also contain the reds and purples, but the green dominates. This is similar to the conundrum of red and orange fall leaves – where do those colors come from? They are there all along, but are masked by the green. In preparation for leaf fall, the trees absorb all the green chlorophyll, leaving the fall colors visible.

White Russian kale (napus type) gives us good yields in our hoophouse in winter.
Photo Pam Dawling

Garlic scallions

Garlic scallions are immature garlic plants, mostly leaves, pulled up before they make bulbs. They are the garlic equivalent of onion scallions (bunching onions, spring onions, escallions). Great for omelets, stir-fries, pesto, soups, and many other dishes.

We plant ours using the culled tiny cloves from the bulbs we save for outdoor garlic planting in early November. Tiny cloves will never produce big bulbs, so growing garlic scallions makes very good use of them! Planting garlic scallions is simplicity itself! Plant the small cloves close together in closely-spaced furrows, simply dropping the cloves in almost shoulder to shoulder, any way up that they fall. Close the furrow and mulch over the top with spoiled hay or straw.

You could plant these next to your main garlic patch, or in a part of the garden that’s easily accessible for harvest in spring. We plant our small cloves for scallions at one edge of the garden, and as we harvest, we use the weed-free area revealed to sow the lettuce seedlings for that week.

If you want to have Garlic Scallions to eat or sell in early spring, when new fresh vegetables are in short supply, and homesteaders may be running out of stored bulb onions, see my post Alliums for March. With a last frost date of 20–30 April, we harvest garlic scallions March 10 to April 30 in central Virginia, or even into May, if our supply lasts out, and we don’t need the space for something else. Harvesting is simple, although depending on your soil, you may need to loosen the plants with a fork rather than just pulling. Trim the roots, rinse, bundle, set in a small bucket with a little water, and you’re done!

A colorful salad of rainbow chard, onion scallions and garlic scallions.
Photo (and salad) by Bridget Aleshire.

Rather than dig up whole garlic scallion plants, some people cut the greens at 10″ (25 cm) tall and bunch them, allowing cuts to be made every two or three weeks. We tried this, but prefer to simply lift the whole plant once it reaches about 7″–8″ (18–20 cm). The leaves keep in better condition if still attached to the clove. Scallions can be sold in small bunches of three to six depending on size. A little goes a long way! If you do have more than you can sell in the spring, you could chop and dry them, or make pesto for sale later in the year.

You can plant garlic scallions at other times of year, if you have planting material. See Plant garlic scallions from softneck varieties (Alliums for February). If you plant in a hoophouse, more of the year opens up as a planting season. You can plant whole bulbs (the small cull ones you can’t sell, or don’t want to peel) and grow your garlic scallions already in a clump, rather than in rows of plants.

Some growers find they make more money from garlic scallions than from bulb garlic, partly because they don’t have the costs of curing and drying the bulbs! I encourage you to experiment with planting a few cloves at different times of year and record your results. Because you do not need to work with the right times for bulbing and drying down, all sorts of dates are possible!

Napa Chinese cabbage

Maybe you think I’m stretching things to classify Napa Chinese cabbage as a workhorse, but in my defense, I’ll say firstly that success in farming involves creativity and flexibility, and secondly that the Asian greens as a category are genuine Hoophouse Workhorses, as they grow so well in cool temperatures and short days. It is a cabbage! We sow Blues (53d from transplanting in mild weather) in a nursery seedbed on September 15 and transplant in the hoophouse October 2, at only two weeks old (very fast-growing in September). Because this is a heading vegetable, we leave it to grow to full size before harvesting. That will be in January. Many of the Asian Greens are harvested by the leaf, but Napa cabbage and pak choy are more often cut as a head.

Young Chinese cabbage transplants in our hoophouse.
Photo by Bridget Aleshire

Workhorse Crops to Harvest in October

Eleven of our 14 workhorse crops can be harvested in October (also true in September and August, but with substitutions!) No asparagus, no garlic, no more watermelon. Depending when the frost bites, there will be several fewer harvest options by the end of October.

Beans can be harvested until the weather gets too cold. We have covered the beds with rowcover to keep the plants warmer and growing faster. It’s true that pollinating insects can’t get at the flowers to perform their pollination services and make more beans, etc. But that doesn’t matter. We are more interested in fattening up the already pollinated beans! It’s also true that the yields are now way down, so we need to balance the benefits against the costs. Sometimes it is better to clear the crop (and its pests and diseases) and sow a cover crop.

Cabbage We harvest fall planted cabbage from September 25. We like Early Jersey Wakefield (45 days from transplanting) and Farao (64d) for fast-maturing cabbage; Melissa Savoy 85d; Early Flat Dutch 85d, Kaitlin 94d, for storage cabbage which are slower-growing. We have also liked huge Tribute 103d, Tendersweet (71d) for immediate fall use, and Wakamine (70d). Deadon (105d winter cabbage) is extremely cold hardy – we leave it outdoors until nights threaten to hit 10°F (-12°C) . Double-check those days to maturity, I may have mixed days from transplanting with days from sowing.

Deadon cabbage
Credit Johnnys Selected Seeds

Carrots: If we sowed carrots in July, we will be harvesting in October.

Chard can be harvested whenever you want some. This year our chard did extremely well all summer and we are bored silly with it! We wish we had had stored cabbage, or some fall broccoli. We are relishing our fall senposai!

The outdoor killing temperature for unprotected Bright Lights chard is 22°F (–6°C); red chard survives down to 15°F (–9.5°C) and green chard to 10°F (–12°C).

Collards can be harvested in October.

Kale can be lightly harvested, if our early August sowings came through.

Potatoes: We can plant potatoes between mid-March and mid-June, leading to harvests in July-October. Protect potatoes from frost when harvesting. Read more about potato harvest here.

Our March-planted potatoes are in the root cellar. We’ve been eating those since July. We often plan to grow more in the June planting than the March planting, as root cellar storage over the summer is more challenging for us than having them in the ground.

Sweet Corn harvest is still going, thanks to our sixth sowing on July 16.

Sweet Potato harvest at Twin Oaks. Photo McCune Porter

Sweet potatoes need harvesting in October here, before it gets too cold. Usually sweet potatoes are harvested the week the first frost typically occurs. I wrote a lot about this topic here. I wrote all the harvesting details in another post, 10/12/20.

Contrary to myth, there is no toxin that moves from frozen leaves down into the roots. On the other hand, below 55°F (13°C), they’ll get chilling injury, which can ruin the crop. Roots without leaf cover after a frost are exposed to cold air temperatures, and have lost their method of pulling water up out of the soil. I remember one awful year when we left the sweet potatoes in the ground too late, hoping they’d fatten up a bit to make up for a poor growing season. Instead, the weather got cold and wet, and the sweet potatoes were rotting in the ground (it was November by then), and those that didn’t rot got chilling damage that prevented them ever softening in cooking. Sweet potatoes that stay hard are no fun to eat!

Tomatoes are winding down. If a frost threatens we will harvest them all, including the green ones. I prefer to store them on egg trays or in shallow crates, to gradually ripen indoors. But other people prefer fried green tomatoes. To my taste buds, it could be cardboard inside the batter! I don’t know the nutrient content of fried green tomatoes, but I feel certain ripened tomatoes without batter are more nutritious!

Winter Squash harvest continues once a week throughout September and October. Stored winter squash can provide meals all winter and also in early spring when other crops are scarce. We used to harvest as late as possible in the fall, but now we prioritize getting a good cover crop established, to replenish and protect the soil, so we have a Grand Finale harvest just before Halloween, when we harvest all the large interesting almost-ripe squash, and give them away for lantern carving. Some go to the chickens too. Harvest before the fruits get frosted, which is shown by a water-soaked appearance of the skin.

Zucchini and summer squash are now being harvested every other day. Our last sowing was August 5. We harvest beyond the first fall frost, by covering that last planting with rowcover on chilly nights. But once it gets cooler, they grow slower, and are not worth checking every day.

From storage: spring cabbage, carrots, garlic and potatoes, winter squash.

Food processing is still busy.

Workhorse Crops Special Topic

Winter rye and crimson clover cover crop
Photo by McCune Porter

Cover Crops

September 17 is our last chance to sow oats as a cover crop. If sown later they will not reach a good size before they are killed by cold temperatures. The soil would not be held together well. It would be better in those circumstances to mow the weeds and leave their roots to hold the soil together over the winter.

Oats winter-kill in most of zone 7 or colder, and survive in zone 8 or warmer. The end for oats is around 10°F (-12°C), depending on their size and the frequency of cold temperatures. Large oat plants winter-kill after 3 days at 20°F (-7°C) or colder. Young oats are tolerant to temperatures down to 12°F (-11°C), until the 5 leaf stage, as the growing point is still underground. Once the plant starts to make noticeable vertical growth and form nodes (22-36 days after planting, depending on variety, sowing date, and water), oats can die at 24°F (-4°C).

Dead oats leave an easy-to-work surface for early spring vegetables.

Clovers can be sown here throughout September, as can winter wheat and winter barley. Winter rye can be sown here in September (not August – it could head up!). Hardy Austrian winter peas can be sown in late September with rye.

For more details, see my post Planning Winter Cover Crops

Everything You Want to Know About Garlic: Garlic Almanac and Phenotypic Plasticity

Silverwhite Silverskin garlic
Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Everything You Want to Know About Garlic:

Garlic Almanac and Phenotypic Plasticity

(How garlic adapts to its locality)

It’s garlic harvest season for many of us and I notice many growers are searching my site for information. Here are quick links.

Garlic signs of maturity from October 2020

Everything You Need to Know About Garlic includes all the links listed below here.

Much about garlic is to be found in my Alliums for the Month Series:

Harvesting Garlic (Alliums for June)
Snip and Sort Garlic (Alliums for July)
Move Stored Garlic (Alliums for September)
Plant Garlic (Alliums for November)
Free Trapped Garlic Shoots (Alliums for December)
Plant garlic scallions from softneck varieties (Alliums for February)
Garlic Scallions (Alliums for March and April)
Garlic Scapes (Alliums for May)
And to sum it all up see My Garlic Slideshow

Garlic harvest.
Photo Twin Oaks Community

Phenotypic Plasticity

Phenotypic plasticity of garlic refers to the changes to a garlic variety grown in a particular location. Genetically identical garlics can grow differently in different environments. Garlic reproduces asexually, the new cloves are all clones of the mother plant, with no new genetic material introduced. And yet, over time, garlic saved and regrown each year in a certain locality will adapt itself to that location, due to the particular soil type, water availability, local temperatures, latitude, altitude and cultural practices. For example, studies have shown that varieties grown in drought-prone areas can, over years, develop more drought-tolerance. Commercial cultivars can have the highest bulb yield under well-watered conditions, but drought will show up the adapted strains in a comparison trial.

Garlic Plants
Photo credit Kathryn Simmons

We have been growing our own strain of hardneck garlic for over 30 years, and it does really well here. Originally the seed stock was a bag of garlic from the wholesale vegetable market. This is the very thing we are told not to do, as it may introduce pests and diseases. Indeed, it may, but our original folly is now deep in the past, and we have fortunately seen no problem.

I was reminded about phenotypic plasticity, when a friend and neighboring grower reported that the seed garlic we had passed on to her was doing well and was mature a couple of weeks before the variety she normally grows.

From the 2004 work of Gayle Volk et al, Garlic Seed Foundation analyzing 211 garlic accessions, we have learned that there are many fewer genetically distinct varieties of garlic than there are named varieties. Of the 211 accessions in that trial, only 43 had unique genotypes. But garlic shows high biodiversity and ability to adapt to its environment. The same garlic genotypes in different environmental conditions can show different phenotypes. This demonstrates the high phenotypic plasticity of garlic, probably linked to its complicated genetics, which somehow compensate for lack of sexual reproduction.

Work done in 2009 by Gayle Volk and David Stern, Phenotypic Characteristics of Ten Garlic Cultivars Grown at Different North American Locations addressed the observation that garlic varieties grown under diverse conditions have highly plastic environmental responses, particularly in skin color and yield. This is a very readable paper for non-academic readers. Ten garlic varieties were grown at twelve locations in the United States and Canada for two consecutive years to identify phenotypic traits of garlic that respond to environmental conditions. The purpose of the study was to determine which phenotypic traits are stable and which vary with location.

Inchelium Red softneck garlic – note the small cloves in the center.
Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Clove number, weight and arrangement, clove skin coloration, clove skin tightness and topset number, size and color stay true to variety independent of location.
Mostly, varieties classified as hardneck types produced scapes and those classified as softnecks did not, but there were some exceptions.
Bulb size, bulb wrapper color and bulb elemental composition (flavor) are related to location, (the influence of the local environment, such as the weather in that production year and the soil mineral content), rather than variety. The intensity of the skin patterns is highly dependent on the location. Some general trends were noted, but no clear correlation was found. (Read the study for the details).
For good size, predictably colored and flavored garlic, buy seed garlic grown locally that yields well. When garlic is grown in similar conditions to those in which it was produced, yields can remain consistent or improve.
Our softneck garlic in May.
Photo Pam Dawling
Varieties that grow well thousands of miles away are not a guarantee of a good result in your garlic patch. They may not match the bulb size, shape, color and flavor listed in the catalogs.
When grown under the same environmental conditions, the leaf number before bolting, flowering date, the final stem length, the flower/topset ratio, and pollen viability vary from one variety to another.
Studies that compared bulb firmness, pH, soluble solids, moisture content and sugar content with appearance determined that many of these traits are independent of skin color across 14 garlic varieties.
Bulb size was highly dependent on growth location with northern sites producing larger bulbs overall than southern sites for at least half of the trial varieties. Regional differences between varieties with respect to bulb size were noted, but because the project had a limited number of sites, specific variety recommendations for different regions were not provided.
Bulb size and weight were positively correlated with soil potassium levels.
Bulb sulfur and manganese content (flavor) were correlated with soil sulfur and manganese levels.
The famous Music garlic, a hardneck type – see the stem.
Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange
The demand for high-quality fresh garlic is increasing as restaurants and consumers seek out local vegetables. Consumers are attracted to colorful, unique garlic varieties for different culinary uses. As variety name recognition in garlic increases, understanding which traits define particular varieties and which traits vary within cultivars, depending on environmental conditions, will be valuable for successful marketing of new garlic types.

Everything You Need to Know About Garlic; Money and More

Softneck garlic ready to harvest
Photo Pam Dawling

We started harvesting our hardneck garlic on May 26 this year. One of the earliest harvests we have on record.

I’ve written lots on garlic in this blog, it’s one of the most sought-out topics. To cut to the chase, here’s my Garlic Recap.

Many of these are posts in my Alliums for the Month Series:

Plant Garlic (Alliums for November)
Free Trapped Garlic Shoots (Alliums for December)
Plant garlic scallions from softneck varieties (Alliums for February)
Garlic Scallions (Alliums for March and April)
Garlic Scapes (Alliums for May)
Harvesting Garlic (Alliums for June)
Snip and Sort Garlic (Alliums for July)
Move Stored Garlic (Alliums for September)
And to sum it all up see My Garlic Slideshow

Harvesting garlic scapes
Photo Wren Vile

For a second opinion, see Margaret Roach (who grows in Massachusetts) in A Way to Garden

Music garlic cut open showing gaps around stem – a sign of maturity.
Photo Southern Exposure Seed Exchange

Of the many other posts I’ve written on garlic, that are not mentioned already, starting with harvest and moving round the calendar, there are:

Harvest

Garlic Harvest step by Step

Harvesting Garlic

Garlic Harvest

Garlic harvest, Intercropping, Summer lettuce,

Garlic harvest finished, fall crop planning, tomato bug heads-up

In September 2020, a reader asked:

In this blogpost https://www.sustainablemarketfarming.com/2013/07/05/snipping-sorting-and-storing-garlic/ you discuss that if a garlic bulb is larger or smaller than 2-2.5″, it should not be used for planting. I’m wondering if you could discuss this in a blogpost perhaps. I grow Polish White softneck and Turban hardneck, and I’ve been using the largest bulbs I can find for planting both. I sort the Polish first though, and use only the biggest cloves from each softneck bulb (culls I dry or pickle). I feel that with the Polish, over time I’ve been increasing my size, and people really like that to purchase. I would be so very interested to read your reasons for the sizing. I’m currently sorting for fall planting and was mulling this today and thought I would just ask to see if you might enlighten your readers. Thanks.

My reply is:

Ah, the hazards of writing a brief article! You can plant any size garlic! Using large cloves from large bulbs usually gives the highest yields, and will, if repeated every year, steer your crop towards bigger bulbs. However, there is a limit: the very largest bulbs are often irregular, and have got large by growing lots of cloves, some of which are very small. As this is probably not what you want to steer towards, don’t use very large irregular bulbs as planting stock.

Yes, I totally agree that if your bulbs are now generally 2.5″ or larger, you are doing the right thing.

Garlic hanging in netting to dry and cure.
Photo Marilyn Rayne Squier

——————————————————-

My DONATE button

I’ve added a donate button, for those who’d like to use it (via PayPal or credit card). We’re all staying home, not going to conferences or fairs. This is reducing my opportunities to collect speaker fees or sell books face to face.

More people are reading my blog (thank you!). There are thousands of new or returning gardeners across the country, aiming to get fresh air and exercise while usefully putting their time into providing food for their households. There are experienced professional growers trying hard to make their farming more efficient, and pivot to find ways to still earn a living and not lose the farm, due to loss of markets.

I put a lot of energy into providing useful info and practical details, and so if you are finding my posts helpful, and you can afford to, please consider clicking the pay-what-you-can button.

Together we’ll get through this difficult time and reach better days again.

———————————————————–

Birth of Assassin Bugs

Debbie Roos, an Agricultural Extension Agent at Chatham County Center, North Carolina Cooperative Extension and the founder of www.growingsmallfarms.org is a wonderful photographer,. She recently reposted this.

A couple of years ago I posted a series of photos on my Growing Small Farms website showing assassin bug nymphs emerging from their eggs. It was an amazing thing to witness and not something you see every day. Folks really enjoyed seeing the photos back then and since it’s spring and time for more to emerge I thought it would be fun to share the photos again now that so many people are spending so much time at home!

Adult wheel bug feeding on a Japanese beetle. Photo by Debbie Roos. Click here to visit NC Cooperative Extension’s Growing Small Farms website to view the photos.

Be on the lookout for these egg clusters on your property and you may even get lucky and witness the birth of an assassin!

———————————————————–

Quick-Growing Vegetable Crops

Steve Albert has an informative website, Harvest to Table, and this post on quick-growing vegetables includes some warm weather crops like bush green beans and sweet corn. It includes names of fast-maturing varieties.

I wrote Fast Growing Vegetables in March, focusing on early spring crops. If you are still racing to catch up, or in need of more crops that yield quickly, see Harvest to Table.

—————————-

How to Fight Hornworms

On the Mother Earth News blog, my post How to Fight Hornworms has been very popular, and has led me to make an article for the Mother Earth Gardener magazine

This magazine is “a quarterly publication committed to giving you in-depth expertise to bolster your organic garden each and every season. Roll up your sleeves and learn soil-boosting strategies, permaculture practices, and more! Formerly known as Heirloom Gardener.”

Tobacco hornworm on tomato leaf
Photo Pam Dawling

16 things I know about growing tomatoes

From Margaret Roach at A WAY TO GARDEN

Margaret writes about home-grown seedlings, finding flavor, choosing between hybrids and open-pollinated varieties, saving seed, good tomato-hygiene, monitoring for pests and diseases, pruning, staking or otherwise supporting the plants, and dealing with the weather.

Jubilee tomato in our hoophouse.
Photo Pam Dawling

Garlic Planting and Freeing Trapped Shoots

Garlic planting crew.
Photo Valerie Renwick

Planting Garlic

We are planting garlic, a topic I’ve written much about! Here are links to a few of my Allium of the Month posts from 2018-2019 and my slideshow.

Plant Garlic in Alliums for November
Free Trapped Garlic Shoots in Alliums for December
Garlic Scallions in Alliums for February, March, April
To sum it all up see My Garlic Slide Show

Sign up for the free Growing for Market newsletter and read my article How and when to plant garlic this month. That article mentions Get ready for garlic planting which you can read if you are a Full Access Member. I wrote these articles back in 2012, so I do have some newer info in my slideshow and my blog posts from last year.

See last year’s Alliums for November for

How Much Garlic to Plant

Popping Garlic Cloves for Planting;

Pre-plant Seed Garlic Treatments to reduce pests and diseases.

Planting garlic cloves, using a 5″ (13 cm) measuring stick.
Photo Brittany Lewis

Preparation for Garlic Planting

Cloves for planting should be from large (but not giant) bulbs and be in good condition. Garlic for planting should be separated into cloves 0–7 days before planting. Twist off the outer skins and pull the bulb apart, trying not to break the basal plate of the cloves (the part the roots grow from), as that makes them unusable for planting. With hardneck garlic, the remainder of the stem acts as a convenient lever for separating the cloves. We sort as we go, putting good size cloves for planting in big buckets, damaged cloves in kitchen buckets, tiny cloves in tiny buckets and outer skins and reject cloves in compost buckets. Don’t worry if some skin comes off the cloves — they will still grow successfully. The tiny cloves get planted for garlic scallions (see below).

When to Plant Garlic

Both hardneck and softneck garlic do best when planted in the fall, though softneck garlic may also be planted in the very early spring if you have to (with reduced yields). If you miss the window for fall planting, ensure that your seed garlic gets 40 days at or below 40°F (4.5°C) in storage before spring planting, or the lack of vernalization will mean the bulbs will not differentiate (divide into separate cloves).

Plant when the soil temperature at 4″ (10 cm) deep is 50°F (10°C) at 9 am. If the fall is unusually warm, wait a week. We plant in early-mid November. (We used to plant at the end of October or early November, but we’ve moved later.) In New Hampshire, mid-October is the time. The guideline for areas with cold winters is 2-3 weeks after the first frost but before the ground freezes solid for the winter. In Michigan, planting time is 6 weeks prior to the ground freezing, giving enough time for root growth only, to avoid freezing the leaves.Instructions from Texas A&M say less than 85°F (29°C) at 2″ (5 cm) deep. In California, garlic can be planted in January or February.

Closing the furrows over the garlic cloves.
Photo Brittany Lewis

Mulch your Garlic Beds

After planting, pull soil over the cloves, tamp or roll to get the cloves in good soil contact to help the roots grow. Within a couple of days, mulch the beds. At planting time, the soil is still warm, and the newly separated cloves are now primed to start growing. If you want to roll out mulch as we do (big round bales of spoiled hay), then you need to act before fragile garlic shoots emerge from the soil. If you are using loose mulch you can blow or throw it over the beds, and a few emerged shoots are no big deal.

Garlic Scallions

Garlic scallions are small garlic plants, mostly leaves, the garlic equivalent of onion scallions (bunching onions, spring onions, escallions). Great for omelets, stir-fries, pesto, soups, and many other dishes. If you want to have Garlic Scallions to eat or sell in early spring, when new fresh vegetables are in short supply, and homesteaders may be running out of stored bulb onions, see my post Alliums for March.

Planting garlic scallions is simplicity itself! Plant small cloves close together in closely-spaced furrows, simply dropping the cloves in almost shoulder to shoulder, any way up that they fall. (If you’ve just finished a large planting of main-crop garlic, you’ll probably be too tired to fuss with them anyway!) Close the furrow and mulch over the top with spoiled hay or straw.

November-planted garlic scallions in February.
Photo Pam Dawling

With a last frost date of 20–30 April, we harvest garlic scallions March 10 to April 30 in central Virginia, or even into May, if our supply lasts out, and we don’t need the space for something else. Harvesting is simple, although depending on your soil, you may need to loosen the plants with a fork rather than just pulling. Trim the roots, rinse, bundle, set in a small bucket with a little water, and you’re done!

Garlic scallions ready for harvest in early spring.
Photo Wren Vile

Cold-hardiness of Young Garlic Plants

At 12°F (−11°C): garlic tops that have grown fairly large will die
At 5°F (−15°C): garlic tops if still small will die.
When properly planted, cloves can withstand winter lows of –30°F (–35°C).
Garlic roots will grow whenever the ground isn’t frozen
Garlic tops will make growth whenever the temperature is above 40°F (4.5°C).

If the tops do get frozen back, do not despair! They will regrow. The growing point of alliums (garlic, onions and relatives) is close to the bulb, probably under mulch, certainly in or close to the soil, where temperatures are warmer. If your garlic gets frozen back twice, the yield will be less than if it had not got frozen, but we don’t control the weather. If your climate is getting colder in the garlic-planting season, plant deeper and/or earlier. But don’t plant earlier if climate change is giving you hotter fall weather!

Garlic shoots poking through the mulch in January.
Photo Pam Dawling

Free Trapped Garlic Shoots

See last year’s Alliums for December for my post Free trapped garlic shoots.

Watch your mulched garlic beds and when the shoots start to emerge, choose the moment to free any trapped shoots, by working along the rows, investigating each spot where you expect a garlic plant to be, but nothing has emerged. Your goal is simply to let the shoot see the daylight. Then it will right itself. Don’t reveal any bare soil, as that will grow weeds (and let colder winter air at the garlic.) Don’t over-work this – as soon as any part of a shoot is visible, leave that plant alone, and move on to the thousands of others. It isn’t necessary to make all the leaves visible, or to clear around the whole plant.

Choosing the right time is tricky. I used to say when half or more of the shoots are visible, but one year we were having a crop disaster, and we waited too long – we were never going to have half visible. Usually, most of them emerge at the same time. it would be helpful to note down how many weeks after planting this is likely to be. We somehow haven’t done that – I think it’s about 3 weeks. Leave a comment if you have an answer!

Alliums for March: transplant bulb onions, harvest garlic scallions, ramps, minimize onion bolting

Flats of March-sown leek seedlings in our coldframe in early April.
Photo Pam Dawling

Allium Planting in March

Divide and replant Egyptian onions and perennial leeks, during March or April
Sow leeks in flats, coldframes, or raised beds. See below
Transplant fall-sown bulb onions early in the month. see Alliums for November and February. More info below
Transplant cipollini seedlings. Cipollini, also known as pearl or boiling onions, are varieties of short day onions sown in spring, planted at high density, which form small bulbs and mature in a couple of months.
Plant shallots Jan-Feb.
Plant softneck garlic cloves or bulbs for garlic scallions. See Alliums for February

Garlic scallions ready for harvest.
Photo Wren Vile

Allium Harvests in March

Start harvesting garlic scallions (3/10 to 4/30 in central Virginia). See below for more details
Harvest hoophouse scallions (our 10/20 sowing Feb 20- mid-Mar and our 11/18 sowing from mid-March.)
Harvest leaves of Egyptian onions & perennial leeks, Sept- April
Harvest winter leeks Dec- March. See Alliums for January and Alliums for November
Harvest ramps, sustainably for one month, from when tree buds appear (late March or early April in the Appalachians). Ramps are a spring ephemeral of deciduous forests. By late May, the leaves die back and a flower stem emerges. Wild ramps are being over-harvested, and it is important to make sure that not all these wild culinary delights vanish and they are still able to find their way onto plates in a sustainable fashion. See
- Sustainable wildcrafting of ramps, by North Carolina Extension Horticultural Specialist Jeanine M. Davis;
- Having Your Ramps and Eating Them Too by the “Johnny Appleseed of Ramps”
- Ramps, part 1: Wild Delicacies Under the Forest Floor By Bjorn Bergman
- Sustainable ramp harvesting Bjorn Bergman: only 5 to 10 percent of the ramps in a patch should be harvested each year to ensure their future survival

Harvested ramps.
Photo Small Farm Central

Alliums to Eat from Storage in March

Eat softneck garlic from storage once all the hardneck has been used (softneck stores longer)
Eat bulb onions from storage, including bulbils from Egyptian onions if you stored those.

Alliums to Weed in March

All overwintered alliums will need weeding in March and once a month after that until harvest. Mulched crops can be weeded during wet weather, if necessary, and the pulled weeds can be discarded on top of the mulch, where they stand a much better chance of dying then weeds discarded on bare soil! It is helpful to have a list of tasks that can be done when the soil is wet, in case of a wet spring (or any season really). Perennial crops and annuals with mulch are the main jobs for this list (along with tool repair and sharpening).

Newly planted alliums in bare soil will benefit from hoeing during dry weather before the weeds get very big at all. Hoe every 1-4 weeks as needed until harvest. Because of their vertical tubular or strap-like leaves, alliums do not compete well with broadleaf weeds and can easily become stunted in high weeds. We learned the hard way one year when our leek beds grew very big weeds. Even though we did pull the weeds, the leeks never grew very big. As well as the competition for light, we think our huge weeds pulled too many nutrients from the soil. After that, we acknowledged the wisdom of growing fewer leeks and taking care of them better, rather than over-extending ourselves.

A fine bed of onions in spring.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Special Allium Topics for March: Sowing leeks, transplanting onions, harvesting garlic scallions, onion bolting factors

Sowing leeks

Calculate how many leeks of each variety you want to harvest, add a margin. Each of our 90 ft (27.5 m) raised beds takes 4 rows of leeks, with plants 6″ (15 cm) apart. That’s 720 plants per bed. We sow in 24″ (60 cm) long flats, aiming for 3 seeds per inch (<1 cm apart). With 6 rows per flat, we need 1.67 flats/bed with no extras. We’ll call that 2 flats per bed.

We don’t need heat to start the leek seedlings, only time, so we put the flats directly into the coldframe. The minimum temperature for leek germination is 35F (), the optimum 65-85F () and they take 8-16 days just to germinate, even at the ideal temperature. Alliums are so slow! I always allow at least 10 days.

Leeks take 10-12 weeks to grow to transplant size. We sow ours March 21 for June 1 transplanting, which is only 10 weeks. When we grew them in a raised bed, it took 12 weeks. We like Lincoln and King Richard for leeks to eat in October and November and Tadorna for over-wintering, to eat December-February.

Transplanting onions

Transplant fall-sown onions as early in spring as possible, and those sown after New Year once they have at least three leaves (four or five is better). The final bulb size is affected by the size of the transplant as well as the maturity date of that variety. The ideal transplant is slightly slimmer than a pencil, but bigger than a pencil lead. Onion seedlings are slow-growing: even in spring they can take ten weeks to reach a size suitable for transplanting. Overly large transplants are more likely to bolt. If seedlings are becoming thicker than a pencil before you can set them out, undercut two inches (5 cm) below the surface to reduce the growth rate. Or use them as scallions.

Some books recommend trimming the tops at transplanting time, but I used to avoid this because I believed it reduces the yield. I forced myself to test out this idea one year, and found I got the same yield from trimmed and untrimmed onions. Trimmed ones are easier to plant. Transplant 4″ (10 cm) apart for single seedlings or 12″ (30 cm) for clumps of three or four (not more than four). Set plants with the base (stem plate) 1/2″–1″ (1.3–2.5 cm) below the soil surface. Some books recommend as deep as two inches (5 cm). Don’t plant too shallowly. Give plenty of water to the young transplants: keep the top 3″–4″ (8–10 cm) of the soil damp for the first few weeks to prevent the stem plate from drying out.

Onion bed in late April.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Harvesting garlic scallions

With a last frost date of 20–30 April, we harvest garlic scallions from early March until May, if our supply lasts out, and we don’t need the space for something else. Harvesting is simple, although depending on your soil, you may need to loosen the plants with a fork rather than just pulling. Trim the roots, rinse, bundle, set in a small bucket with a little water, and you’re done!

Some people cut the greens at 10″ (25 cm) tall and bunch them, allowing cuts to be made every two or three weeks. We tried this, but prefer to simply lift the whole plant once it reaches about 7″–8″ (18–20 cm). The leaves keep in better condition if still attached to the clove. Scallions can be sold in small bunches of three to six depending on size. If you do have more than you can sell in the spring, you could chop and dry them, or make pesto for sale later in the year.

Onion bolting factors

Onions are cool-season plants. They have three distinct phases of growth — vegetative, bulbing and blooming (bolting), and the switch from one phase to the next is triggered by environmental factors. It does not work to plant onions at a random date in the year without taking account of these environmental factors. Success depends on understanding what this crop needs during each of the three phases. To get a full understanding of the three phases and the factors that cause plants to switch to the next phase, see the Bulb Onions chapter of my book, Sustainable Market Farming.

Continue reading “Alliums for March: transplant bulb onions, harvest garlic scallions, ramps, minimize onion bolting”

Sequential Planting slideshow, seedlings and garlic scallions

Here’s one of the slideshows form my three workshops at the PASA Conference last weekend. I’ll add the others over the next few weeks. To see all my slideshows, see the Slideshows category in the sidebar of this page, or go to the link at SlideShare.net

Sequential planting cool season crops in a hoophouse 2019 dawling from Pam Dawling

Meanwhile at home, we’ve been starting seedlings. We have a plastic tent with a heat mat for the tomato and peppers plants destined for the hoophouse.

Our heat mat and tent for tender seedlings in our greenhouse.
Photo Pam Dawling

February photo of tomato and pepper seedlings with heat mat and plastic tent.
Photo Pam Dawling

The hardier seedlings are in the greenhouse without any other protection, except for a back-up heater set to 45F, and rowcover at night if it gets exceptionally cold..

Open flats of brassica seedlings. The nearer flat is a 3″ deep seed flat with four rows of seedlings. The back ones are transplant flats with 40 bigger seedlings spotted out.
Photo Pam Dawling

And outdoors the ground is saturated, with standing water. Not much gardening is happening! But our garlic scallions are growing just fine.

Our garlic scallions in February. we usually space the rows much closer than this. We’ll start harvesting when they reach 7″ in height.
Photo Pam Dawling

Alliums for February: garlic scallions, digging leeks from frozen soil

September-planted (left) and November-planted (right) beds of potato onions in April.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Plant small potato onions (less than 1.5″ (4 cm) diameter) in early Feb, if not Jan. See Alliums for January
Sow shallot seed. See Alliums for January
Sow scallions for transplant See Alliums for January
Transplant fall-sown bulb onions late in the month. see Alliums for November
Plant shallot bulbs Jan-Feb. See Alliums for January
Plant soft neck garlic cloves or bulbs for garlic scallions. See Alliums for November and learn a new trick. Some growers are finding they can get a better income from garlic scallions than from bulb garlic, and so they are working to extend the garlic scallion season. We have only ever planted small cloves for garlic scallions in early November immediately after planting our maincrop garlic. By planting later it is possible to stretch the harvest period out later. Softneck garlic varieties can make worthwhile growth for scallions even if planted after the start of January. Some growers have experimented with replanting small bulbs of garlic, not even dividing the bulbs into separate cloves. This could be a good way to salvage value from a poorly-sized garlic harvest.

Allium Harvests in February

An October 20 sowing of scallions in the hoophouse in January. Maybe they’ll be ready mid-February?
Photo Pam Dawling

Harvest the last hoophouse scallions 9/6 at the beginning of Feb; harvest the 10/20 sowing later in Feb (and the 11/18 sowing from mid-March.)
Harvest perennial leeks as leeks (see Jan or Dec) Sept-Feb last month. See Alliums for December
Harvest leaves of Egyptian onions & perennial leeks, Sept- April
Harvest winter leeks Dec- March. See Alliums for January and Alliums for November

Special Allium Topic for February:: Harvesting Leeks from Frozen Soil.

When the soil is frozen there are two risks with trying to pry leeks out of the ground. One is breaking the frozen leek. The other is breaking your digging fork. If you only need a few leeks, there is a less risky method. (It’s still less risky for larger quantities, but also less practical.) Gather your digging fork, trimming knife and a container for the liberated leeks. Boil a kettle or two of water and pour the water on the soil around the leeks. If you still can’t dig the leeks up, go boil more water. If two trips with boiling water doesn’t work, I’d give up at that point! Obviously this isn’t going to work in climates with solidly frozen ground, until warmer weather arrives. But at some point it will get warm enough to use this trick and enjoy the leeks you’ve been craving.

This long view of our winter leeks was taken in December.
Photo Pam Dawling

Alliums to Eat from Storage in February

Eat softneck garlic from storage once all the hardneck has been used (softneck stores longer)
Eat bulb onions from storage, including bulbils from Egyptian onions if you stored those. Read more about garlic and onion storage in the Alliums for September post. Here’s the headlines:

Not too dry, not too damp.

Above 60–70°F (15.5–21°C) or below 40°F (4.4°C) for garlic; 60–90°F (16–32°C) or below 41°F (5°C) for bulb onions. Do not freeze. (Chilling injury at 31°F)

Avoid 40–56°F (4.4–13°C) for garlic, avoid 45–55°F (7–13°C) for bulb onions

Garlic and Onions drying.
Photo Southern Exposure Seed Excahnge

Harbinger weeds of spring, and early garlic scallions

We’ve failed to restore the bog post that got hacked two weeks ago. Last week I reposted the Diversify Your Vegetables slideshow that had been part of the Lost Post. Today I’ll write more about garlic scallions. Here’s my general theme of today: is 2017 bringing an early spring?

Flowering Purple (or Red) Dead Nettle, with honeybee.
Credit Kathryn Simmons

I wrote last summer about the three early spring flowering weeds of chickweed, henbit and purple dead-nettle. At that time, I was watching for newly germinating fall seedlings of those three to indicate it was cool enough to sow spinach. Now I’m looking at these weeds flowering to see how fast the spring warm-up is progressing. The photo above shows the dead nettle in late spring, with some chickweed and a honey bee. Two weeks ago (2/6) I saw small flowering versions of all three. Is this early?? Yes, earlier than average, by a week or so. But still within the range of normal.:

Chickweed flowers.
http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/S/W-CP-SMED-FL.006.html
Photo by Jack Kelly Clark.

Chickweed has been seen flowering here as early1/1 (2007) to as late as 3/16 (2015, were we unobservant?) Average 2/13. One week earlier than average for that one.

Henbit flowers, Lamium amplexicaule.
http://ipm.ucanr.edu/PMG/L/W-LB-LAMP-FL.004.html
Photo by Jack Kelly Clark.

Henbit has been seen flowering here on 1/6 (2007) to as late as 3/29 (2014). The average is 2/22. Two weeks earlier than average for that one.

Dead nettle has flowered here as early as 1/21 (2011) to as late as 3/18 (2003). Its average is more like 3/1. Three weeks earlier than average, but still not the earliest ever.

I think I saw a flowering dandelion too.

We make a Phenology List each year. No crocuses open here yet!

Garlic scallions in April.
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Last week I wrote about garlic scallions, in a bit of a hurry. We usually harvest these starting March 1st, but this year we started at the end of January, as the plants had grown tall enough. Another indicator of spring being warmer than usual, so far.

Here’s more about growing this tasty bonus vegetable

Reasons to grow garlic scallions:

A very tasty and visually attractive crop during the Hungry Gap, the spring period before any new crops are ready for harvest, when our palates are getting tired of leafy greens and stored roots.
Supply garlic taste at a time when supplies of bulb garlic may have run out.

How to grow garlic scallions:

Set aside the smallest cloves when planting your main garlic crop
Find a small space which will be easy to get to in early spring (late winter), and make furrows a couple of inches deep as you would for planting regular garlic cloves.
Plant the tiny cloves close together in close-set furrows, dropping them in almost shoulder to shoulder, just as they fall. Close the furrow and mulch over the top with spoiled hay or straw.

Harvesting garlic scallions:

We harvest garlic scallions from early March, once they reach about 7-8″ (18-20 cm) tall,
They last till May, unless we need to use the space.
Loosen the plants with a fork rather than just pulling
Trim the roots, rinse, bundle, set in a small bucket with a little water
Scallions can be sold in small bunches of 3-6 depending on size

Alternative harvest method:

Rather than digging up the plants, cut the greens at 10″ (25 cm) tall, and bunch them, allowing cuts to be made every two or three weeks. Greens wilt quicker than scallions, and you’ll have to wait till later to start harvesting them.

We’re about to sow our first carrot bed, which will be our first outdoor sowing of the year. We are preparing beds to transplant spinach, cabbage, kale and collards. We belatedly noticed that our tiller tines are worn down! Oh, if only we had been on top of this and put new ones during the winter, we’d be having an easier time of turning under the cover crops and weeds this week!

We sow “indicator beets” with our carrots so that we know when to flame-weed them
Photo Kathryn Simmons

Storage Vegetables slide show, Diversify your vegetable crops slideshow again

Well, we are getting back on the horse/bicycle after being hacked, and hoping to return to normal. Here is my other presentation from the SSAWG conference: Storage Vegetables for Off-Season Sales.

Storage vegetables for off season sales 2017 90min dawling from Pam Dawling

And in case you missed last week’s post before it got attacked, here’s Diversify Your Vegetable Crops again:

Diversify your vegetable crops 2017 90 mins Pam Dawling from Pam Dawling

The three presentations I gave this past weekend at the PASA Conference can be found at SlideShare. Click the link to get directly to the first of the pages with my presentations on it, or go to the SlideShare site and put my name or that of the presentation you want in the search box. I presented Growing Sweet Potatoes from Start to Finish, Crop Rotations for Vegetables and Cover Crops and Succession Planting for Continuous Vegetable Harvests

Dealing with the hack has taken a lot of time and energy, so this post will be short. Today has been unseasonably warm, and atypically windy. We have been pruning blueberries, preparing raised beds and harvesting spinach, leeks and garlic scallions, our first “new” crop of 2017. Usually I reckon on starting to harvest these March 1st, but they have grown a lot recently. They are about 6″ tall. A very flavorful fresh taste for this time of year (the Hungry Gap) when we mostly get leafy greens and stored roots.

Simply set aside all the tiny garlic cloves when you do your main planting, prepare a series of furrows close together. Tumble in the cloves, shoulder to shoulder, any way up. Cover the furrows, mulch over the soil and wait for early spring. When the garlic scallions are at least 6″ tall, start digging them up. Use them raw if you are inclined, or chop and cook them in omelets, stir-fries, soups, anywhere you’d like the taste of garlic. Pow!