 Next up we're going to have a talk about growing a specially vegetable crop garlic and luckily we have an experienced garlic producer and our staff. The name is Kerry Knudsen. Kerry is the horticulture agent in Grand Forest County. She's been with NDSU extension for 17 years. And plants, gardening and soil are her passions. And her favorite programs are youth gardening and going out to house calls to help county residents with all those horticulture issues. Kerry, welcome to the forums. Alright, thanks Tom. Good evening everyone. And growing garlic is a lot like growing erronea. It's a pretty easy crop to grow. So hopefully if you haven't grown it before tonight, we'll give you some tips and tricks so you can get it in your garden this fall. So why do you, well let's go back. What we're going to cover tonight. We're going to talk about why you would want to grow garlic. The different parts of a garlic plant, garlic types, planting and care, how to harvest garlic and then in curing and storage. So why would you want to grow garlic? I said the same thing to myself about six years ago when I was out at a gardener's house for looking at his trees and he shared some of his garlic with me. Once you've had homegrown garlic, you won't go back to the grocery store garlic. It has a lot more flavor to it. It's a lot more pungent in times and recipes where they might say add two cloves of garlic. When you're using homegrown garlic, you only need to add one. And it's easy to grow and there's lots of health benefits associated with garlic as well. So before we go any further, we're going to talk a little bit about the parts of a garlic plant. It is in the same family that onions are, but it's a little bit different in terms of how it's formed. So we have our roots at the bottom and then we have a basil plate. And that is where our cloves are attached to and those cloves, when they're all formed together, they form our garlic bulb. And then there can be a flower stock for our garlic. And then on that stock, as we go up that stock, there's leaves that come up and then we also have our flower stock. We have the scape that is the part of the flower stem that starts to curl. And then at the end of that is where we could get some flowers or some little garlic bulbules that form. So garlic types, there's two main garlic types. You probably have heard of them before. We have a softneck and hardneck garlic types. Softneck garlic is usually grown in warmer climates where there is not as harsh a winter as we have. They don't have a flower stock and they usually have higher number of cloves in their bulb, around 10 to 40. They're easy to braid if you've ever seen pictures on social media or searching the internet of where they have garlic braided. That's using softneck garlic because it doesn't have that hard flower stock in the middle. And softneck garlic has a long storage life and this is typically the varieties that we see in the grocery store. For our purposes, for what we grow or need should grow. For the most part in our gardens in the North Dakota area and colder climates, we want to grow hardneck garlic. Hardneck garlic is potted in the fall. It needs the cooling temperatures to set its system so that it can produce more cloves the next growing season. It has that hard flower stock, like I mentioned, so it's not easy to braid. You're not going to have those wonderful long garlic braids to store your garlic. And it has a few cloves, a smaller number, 4 to 12, but they are bigger in size. And it does have a little bit of a shorter storage life, but there's ways to take advantage of that. Now those are just two of the varieties. There's lots of in-between varieties. So if you're looking at selecting varieties to grow, do your research into them. I know at the Field DeFork a couple of weeks ago, Dr. Harleen Hatterman-Valenti presented some information on varieties. So you can look at that. One thing to note is that garlic, very rarely, or it's very hard for it to produce seed. So a lot of the selections that we have today for our varieties, our mutations, are just garlic that's been selected for different properties throughout our characteristics throughout its lifetime. And we'll talk about the baubles a little bit later, but those can be grown into garlic cloves, too. So when it comes to garlic planting, garlic really likes a well-drained soil with a lot of organic matter. It's best if you loosen or till the soil before you plant it. And going back to the soil type, the reason why we want to have a well-drained soil is that we are eating what's growing in the soil. So we want to make sure that it's well-drained so we don't have a chance for pathogens to develop on those cloves. The next thing when you're looking at selecting a site for your garlic is you want to choose a site that has full sun. So around eight hours of sunlight a day. Nitrogen or, excuse me, garlic can be a heavy feeder of nitrogen. So you want to do a soil test to see what your baseline is for your nitrogen levels. If you need to add some nitrogen, you can do a slow release fertilizer at planting. You can also use a well composted manure or compost before planting and work that in. And then as the garlic starts to emerge in the spring, you can topdress with a synthetic nitrogen source if you want to. I typically don't need to use nitrogen in my garden setting. There's enough there, but I do put compost on in the fall as well. When it comes to planting garlic, you want to plant it one to two weeks before the first freeze. Typically, depending on the growing season, that's mid-September through mid-October. But I found that garlic can be quite forgiving too. Last year I probably planted mine a little bit early beginning of October because I knew it was going to rain. And I wanted to get it in the ground before it turned to mud. Well, we really didn't get a freeze till about middle of November, I think. And it still was fine. I didn't see anything emerging above the soil. So it can be forgiving. You just want to get it in the soil so that it has time. You might get a little bit of rut emergence or chute emergence from the garlic clove. You want it to get it so it has a start. You just don't want it to emerge above the soil. When it comes to planting, use the largest clothes that you have. You can purchase new clothes through many websites and like that. Or you can save from year to year. Just make sure that you are planting disease or injury-free clothes. And you want to make sure that that clotheskin is intact. It's a little paper covering that helps protect the clove. You want to plant the clove at least three to four inches deep. And you want to make sure that you have that basal plate at the bottom and the tip of the garlic pointing at the top. Otherwise, your garlic is going to waste a lot of energy flipping around to get back up to the soil surface. And you'll have some funky looking clothes. When it comes to spacing in a garden setting, it's really up to how you like to garden. If you like wide row spacing, you can keep, you know, put them as far apart as you need for whatever tillage method you use in your garden setting. I like to plant mine fairly close together. I have a small garden space. So they're probably four to five inches apart in a little grid pattern. That makes it easy because garlic doesn't have a lot of above ground growth. So as long as you have enough space for those bulbs to grow, you can plant them fairly close together. When you're all done planting, it's important to cover the soil with a type of mulch where you planted your garlic. And this is for a couple different reasons. We'll get into that in a second. Your mulch should be about three to four inches deep and you should use clean weed-free straw or hay, something that hasn't been treated with any herbicide. You can use leaves from your lawn as long as they don't have any lawn clippings mixed in with them. That might have some herbicide residue or you can use compost. In my garden, I typically try to use leaves. I use what I have this year. I actually used just some plant residue. It was disease-free. I had some zucchini vines. I had some cucumber vines as I was cleaning up the garden towards the end of the year and some green beans that I put on top as well. So we'll see how that works this summer. But the reason why we want to have mulch is it helps prevent fluctuations in soil temperatures. So in the middle of winter, we did not have a lot of snow cover this year. And as the temperatures warmed up, it still helped keep that soil around that colder so the garlic didn't think it was time to grow. And then as we get into the growing season, it also helps control weeds. So leave your mulch on on top of your garlic. As I mentioned, it has a really thin canopy. So you want that ground covered to prevent weed emergence because garlic is not going to be that competitive against weeds. If you want to, you can always go inspect your garlic patch. I do to see what's coming up. And you can move your mulch a little bit away from the base of your plants as they come up to give it some room to breathe. When it comes to watering, it's similar to onion and has a really shallow root system. So you might want to add some supplemental watering during dry weather. And it also depends on your soil texture. If you have a little bit sandier soil, you're going to have to irrigate a little bit more. Clay soil may not have to water quite as much. An important thing to remember is that if you are irrigating, you want to stop watering at least a couple weeks before harvest that gives your bulbs a chance to kind of dry down in the soil to dry down and realm them as well. I mentioned before we're talking about having a well-drained soil. You don't want to overwater. You don't want to have any heavy waterlogged soils that would lead to disease development. When it comes to care for your garlic, it is pretty low maintenance. The hardest thing about it is planting and harvesting. And that could be said for about anything that we plant in our vegetable gardens. One thing that is recommended that you do is to remove the scapes. And they are the immature flower stem. And at the end of the scape, you will find the flower or the bulbules. And you want to remove them because this gives the plant a chance to put all the energy back into the bulbs instead of producing those little bulbules. You want to remove the scape just as it starts to curl. And you can cut down to that first set of true leaves. Now, immature scapes are edible. So you can put them in stir fries and eat them. The bulbules are not, so make sure that you're harvesting the correct portion. But you can use those little bulbules to grow new plants. They have a little bit longer of a growth cycle, so you're going to have to take more care of them in terms of getting them to grow out to be larger clothes. On to harvest. I think this is the number one question I get when it comes to growing garlic. There's a couple different options, a couple different ways I kind of use a hybrid way. I wait until I see the lower third of the stems, excuse me, lower third of the leaves turning brown. The top half is still fairly green. At that point, I will go in and use a potato fork to gently pry up one of my plants. And then if I look at it and see that the cloves are all filled in, it's nice and firm. And I will go in and harvest. You can also cut the clothe in half through the middle and look at it and see if the cloves have filled their skins to know that it's time to harvest. Depending on the weather, harvest can be anytime from the end of July to the beginning of August. This is the hardest part when it comes to garlic is having patience for harvesting. You need to carefully dig out the bulbs so as that you don't injure them. In my garden setting, I don't have issues with disease. My disease comes from my potato fork hitting the bulbs as I'm digging them up. So you want to have patience and be careful. The last thing you want is one of nice bulb with big cloves in it to have a slice right through it that won't store over winter. When you harvest them, you want to make sure that you leave everything attached to the garlic bulb. You want to leave the leaves and the roots attached. Some people, their discussions on washing them before they're cured, before you start drying them, that's up for debate. I don't wash mine in my garden setting. And as you can see here, this was my garden a couple years ago. The bulbs are dirty when they come out of the soil, but after you let them cure for a few weeks, most of that soil just comes right off and you don't have issues with the mess when you're storing them. So when it comes to curing, you can dry the bulbs on wire screens or small wire fencing. You want to cure them for a few weeks in a well ventilated or shady area. You don't want to put them in direct sun. Once those bulbs and the leaves and the roots have all dried down, everything's brown, everything's crunchy. You can cut down the tops, leaving an inch at the top, and then you can trim the roots too, which also helps make it cleaner for storage. When we talk about storage, you want to store the bulbs in a cool, dry place. If you're talking about long-term storage, this is your fridge. I thought I had kept garlic all winter, but I actually ate it. I was trying to save some to show during the presentation. But it keeps well in the fridge over the winter. However, when you do take it out, you do need to use it quickly, because it has had that cooling period and it's going to start to sprout. You can store it short-term on your countertop. As soon as it's cured, I keep some during the fall as I'm cooking and doing my canning. You also want to store, save some clothes for next year. You want to save the biggest clothes and you just can store them at room temperature. I think it's around 60, 50 degrees. I usually keep mine in the garage before I plant them for next year. When it comes to storing garlic, especially hardneck garlic, it is like I mentioned, you can't breed it. The best way to store them is to store them in mesh bags to help keep some air movement going through them. So that's all I have. And any questions? Yes, we've got a few here. First of all, there's a gardener who grew garlic and he thought they dug up all the garlic last year. But it's coming back this spring. Can that happen? Yep, it sure can. I've had that happen. I've missed or I've maybe put a piece that I thought was bad in the compost and I'll have random garlic coming up. So it can overwinter without our help, without us doing anything. So it should be good garlic to harvest. How about, can you plant something like lettuce or radishes in between the garlic in the spring to make better use of the space in a small garden? You are correct of planting something in there. I don't know that I would do radishes, although they might mature faster. The general rule of thumb and kind of interplanning is plant the opposite of what you're trying to grow. So garlic, you're trying to grow bulb in the ground. So maybe lettuce would be a little bit better. I have had volunteer flowers and dill in the garden with my garlic and they seem to do well together. How about, can you grow garlic in a window box or in a pot? You probably could, should you? I don't know. You have to make sure you have that curing period. It's going to have to be in a cold. The garlic needs that chilling period in order for it to grow next year. So if you can revive that somehow without the garlic bulb freezing and drying out in theory, you could. Maybe if you go ahead. I was wondering about how about a raised bed with a three foot tall metal sides. I think a raised bed would work. You'd have plenty of insulation around there too. You can always try a few and see how it works. Or maybe mulch, that's where mulching can really help to make it survive. Yep. So this person planted garlic last spring, last spring. So will they get a successful harvest this fall? So I have heard of people planting garlic in the spring. I don't think you're going to get the nice bulb formation that you would get that you planted in the fall. You might get more of a green onion type growth on it. But you can see I've heard of people trying it, as long as it had that chilling period so that it knows that it can grow. Okay. Another wildlife question here. And there's something eat their garlic. And they also eat the two of bulbs. Maybe it was a vole. What do you think? The vole's like garlic? Yeah. I've never had anything eat my garlic. Even the bunnies stay away from it. So it was something that was very hungry. It's been starving. How about, or it was an Italian vole maybe or something like that. How long can you store those dried bulb bills to plant them? So the small bulb bills that you're growing out, they would be planted the same way that you would garlic. So if you harvest the bulb bills in July, you're going to plant them in October. And then let them go through the growing season, you're going to pull them up, let them cure, dry down and put back down again if you're moving around or you could just keep them in the same place too and let them grow. Okay. Good. Does garlic repel insect pests? I don't know about that. It does not repel aphids, I can tell you that. They were on my dill and I had to wait until the army of ladybugs moved in to get rid of them. So it's not aromatic when it's growing. I don't think it's enough to repel. I have, except for, I haven't not seen anything eat the leaves either though, if that makes sense. Okay. That reminds me of those mosquito plants that they don't really repel bugs. They don't, you'd have to break open the leaves and wave them around all the plays and then you start sweating and insects are attracted to sweat. So it just doesn't work. So here's a question about harvesting the scapes. How do you know when they're good to harvest? So you want to get them garlic scapes will curl. If I go back to that very one of the very first slides. Whoops. You can see it's starting to curl. You want to get it just as it starts to curl before it starts to form that seed head for a lack of better words. And then you can trim right down to the first set of true leaves. I always wait. So it always seems like it just all of a sudden is there. So make sure you're watching your garlic. And this person says they think they harvested too late and it got woody. Yep. Is that right? Yep. I've done that before. It doesn't taste very good either. Okay. How do you cook it? I like to just saute in like a stir fry with some other vegetables and some meat. Sounds good. How long will a dry ball bill last? The small ones, little ones, I don't know on that but I do think they will dry out faster. So you want to get them in the ground if you're growing them out for future years. Same way you would plant regular garlic. Okay. As far as the varieties, is anyone's easier to grow? Like is white garlic easier to grow than purple garlic? That, to me, I think they're all about the same. I think the red garlic is a little bit prettier as you're harvesting and eating it but to me it's the hardiness of it if it's going to handle our winters with no snow cover and 30 below temperatures. So that's why we use a hard neck type because it's hardier. How about have you ever tried growing elephant garlic? I have not. I learned about that in Harleen's presentation at Field of Fork and I have not tried that. Okay. This person commented that they have successfully frozen peeled garlic cloves. I think you can freeze this about anything. The only good thing about garlic is that the flavor is already there. You don't have to freeze it to eat it. You can eat it fresh unlike the Aronia berries. Okay. Now we're talking about the scapes again. When you say to trim down the scape to the first set of true leaves, do you need the first set from the bottom near the soil or the first set from the top? Nice catch. That is the first set from the top, from the bottom of the, so the uppermost leaf set. You don't want to trim it all the way down to the bottom because you'd be removing the leaves. So from the top, the uppermost leaf set. Does that make sense? Yes. It makes sense because a plant needs the leaves to nourish the garlic cloves, right? Yes. I don't want to take off all the leaves. Okay. Sounds like you got it all covered there, Carrie. All right. Thanks a lot. It was a great presentation. We really appreciate it. All right. Thank you, Tom.