Fall Plantings

Well I was able to find time to plant my garlic & shallots that I got this year from the Maine Potato Lady.  It felt like an unseasonably warm October so I waited until close to the end of the month to plant my bulbs.  I had a couple hours one evening before it got too dark and planted everything October 30th, 2012.  It was a balmy 68F according to my double top secret treasure garlic map I scrawled on a piece of graph paper.

2012-2013 Garlic Map

I planted three beds this year with a mixture of items in varying densities.  I had two varieties of hard-neck garlic: Russian Red and German Red.  I noted that the cloves I got with the Russian Red Garlic seemed to be a lot more durable and were easier to peel with out damaging the papery skin of the clove.

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I got 49 large cloves from the Russian and about 25 large cloves from the German.  At the end of the day I had about the same number of cloves from both varieties but the Russian Red cloves seemed to have way more large cloves.

All the cloves from these hard-neck varieties were way bigger than the soft-neck I planted last year.  I decided to try the soft-neck garlic again even though I had limited success last season with this variety.  I was able to pick up a package of soft-neck garlic from a local garden center which only seemed to carry soft-neck garlic.  This seems odd for the New Hampshire climate, but I still figured I would give it a go.  The cloves from the hard-neck garlic were about double the size of the soft-neck garlic.

In addition to the garlic, I am trying to grow shallots for the first time.  I have had very limited success if I can call it that with onion sets planted in the spring so I figured shallots in the fall – why not…

The French Gray Shallots from the Maine Potato Lady were great for filling in some empty spots around some of my beds.

Due to some warm weather I did not cover the beds with some shredded leaf mulch until last weekend.  This year I tried to really shred the leaves more with the lawn mower prior to raking/bagging the leaves up.  I am also trying not to go as deep as I did last year.  The depth of the mulch this year is in the 2-3” range as opposed to the 4-6” range.  With three beds of garlic this time I am hoping to do a phased removal of the leaf mulch to see how that impacts garlic growth.  Last year I may have left the mulch on a little to long and I think I smothered quite a few plants in the process.  So time will tell.

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3 comments on “Fall Plantings”

  1. Pingback: Onions and Garlic « Little Creek Maple Farm

  2. Pingback: Garden Update « Little Creek Maple Farm

  3. Pingback: Garlic From Planting to Garlic Scapes « Little Creek Maple Farm

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