A bulbil experiment

One of the garlic plants produced really huge bulbils this year. I mean five to ten times the size of normal bulbils. I'm going to use them for an experiment.

I have this theory that bulbils are sort of designed to be planted in July/Aug, when they would fall off the scapes naturally if they were allowed to remain in situ. The ones that grow wild in a corner of the garden do send up little sprouts this time of year. I'm wondering if planting the bulbils now would give them a head start, possibly even cutting one whole season off their growth.

What I've done in the past is to sow the bulbils in late October, the same time that the garlic cloves are planted. They then sprout in the spring, grow for a couple months, and die back in late May or June. The next year, unless they're crowded too badly, they grow a bit bigger before dying off, and then the third year they actually produce at least two cloves, sometimes the standard four cloves for this variety.

I'm wondering if I can cut off that first spring die-back by planting now, and letting them grow until the ground freezes in December, when they'll die back, sort of tricking them into thinking they'd had next spring's growth cycle, so next year they'll grow as if it were the second year in the ground.

So. I planted about forty of those mega-bulbils on August 24th in a generally fertile and sunny area of the garden, and I threw in a good amount of composted manure before planting. They're spaced at least an inch away from each other to give them room to grow, although they're scattered, rather than in straight lines. I have a thick layer of mulch next to the bed, but will wait until the first hard frost before covering them.

Now that I'm writing this down, it dawns on me that I should probably do a comparison row of just regular-sized bulbils, so there's no question that it's the timing, rather than the size of the bulbils, that's speeding up the maturing of the bulbs. I'll do that sometime this week. There's enough room in that part of the garden and plenty of manure and regular-sized bulbils for a second strip, and there will only be a few days between the two plantings.

ETA: I did plant that second row of bulbils about a week after the first row.

To be continued.

Chaos

I usually have a plan written down before I start planting each year. If nothing else, it makes crop roation easier -- I have a record of what went where, so it can go in a different spot the next year. I wasn't obsessive about it. No to-scale drawings on graph paper or anything. Just an index card with a rectangle for each bed, filled in with the type of plant in that bed.

This year, I'm going freestyle. I know where I can't repeat the tomatoes and peppers, so they're pretty much limited to one bed each. Other than that, it's chaos. I'm trying to look at it as experimenting and to remember that change is actually good for keeping us young.

I still don't like change.

But I am interested in at least one experiment. I've got most of a long bed filled with alliums: a 30-foot row of garlic and three adjoining rows of red onions. But I left space at each end of the bed to put the butternut squash. Not enough space to grow the whole squash plant, but enough space for the roots of the plant. I'm hoping, if the timing is right, that the garlic will have been harvested by the time the squash vines start traveling too far from the roots, and they can fill the empty space where the garlic was. And then later expand into the area where the onions where. I seeded one end of the bed, but ran out of energy before I did the other end. One good thing, if the timing is off, is that the far end of the bed is near the fence around the garden, and in the worst case scenario, I can encourage the vines to climb up the fence.

Other than that, I planted a few zucchini plants in a gap at one end of the asparagus bed; a six foot row of Bright Lights swiss chard, with just a couple green bean plants in the middle of the row(because my co-gardener and her family don't eat green beans); and some dill in a planter that will eventually be over-run with mint, but at the moment only has a scraggly little bit in it, so I figure there's time for one crop of dill before the mint takes over.

Garlic experiments

We experimented on the garlic in a dozen different ways this year.

First, there was the new-to-us variety that succumbed to cold/wet weather, an wasn't early enough or prolific enough to justify the space it took.

Second, we've always had trouble waiting long enough for the garlic heads to finish growing, but this year we waited a little too long. The ones we harvested in the first half of the month, before I was out of town, were at their peak, and the ones we harvested the 20th to today were somewhat over-mature, with their wrappers disintegrating. On the plus side, the bulbils on the top of the scapes were fully mature and easy to remove and save for eating and/or future planting.

Another experiement in the works: Pickled garlic. It's basically just peeled garlic cloves soaking in vinegar with a small amount of salt and sugar, left to mellow for thirty days. The first batch will be ready on July 28. I've also made a batch using just the bubils from the top of the scape, on the theory that they might be interesting on top of a cracker, perhaps with cheese in between. Sort of like caviar made out of garlic bulbils.

Still to come this year (if we like the first batch): picked garlic with a hint of habanero pepper, for those who like hotter stuff.

The experiment for next year is to test what I think is largely a myth among garlic growers. I've read in a number of places that removing the scapes will result in a bulb that's substantially larger than if the scape and it's bulbil head are left to mature. My theory is that there might be a small difference -- enough to matter to a commercial grower seeking top dollar for his crop -- but not enough to give up the secondary crop of the bulbils or to justify the extra work of clipping the scapes. So, we're planning to play two rows of six cloves, preferably taken from idential heads (or as close as possible in size and vigor) in close proximity to each othe, and then clip the scapes of one of the rows and not the other. Harvest them all at the ideal time (how can we tell if they're ready without the scape to judge by?), and then weigh them.

Garlic weekend

This is garlic weekend. A little later than I'd hoped, but the weather has been dismal. And, as noted a couple days ago, the peppers keep hanging on, and they're in the bed that will be garlic and onions next year.

For the main garlic crop, we have ten heads of the German extra-hardy garlic that we've grown in the past (which should produce about 50 cloves, and thus 50 heads next year). We also have a new-to-us variety, Chinese pink, which should produce about 30 heads next year.

We've already planted the scapes, in about a 4' x 6' plot, followed by five closely-spaced 4'-long rows of transplanted first-year cloves from previous scapes, and then three progressively closer and more chaotic patches of the first-year cloves.

My fellow gardener did the first five neat rows, with the cloves spaced 3" to 4" apart, and I got to toss the rest randomly. Our excuse is that it's an experiment: will the neatly planted rows produce sufficiently bigger or otherwise better cloves that it's worth the effort to plant them that way?

Really, it's just that I'm a lazy gardener. And it's fun to throw things without getting arrested for it.