Garlic

Hi

I planted Garlic during Sept / Oct seems to be okay thinking of planting more the Garlic which is planted was from BQ and other garden centres my question is the Garlic one buys in Tesco and other food outlets can one plant these after spliting into seperate cloves will it grow like the Garlic you would buy from garden centres.

 

Garlic in Tescos usually comes from other countries, so is suited to growing in their climate, not ours.

Better to get some cloves suitable for the UK (but then you can plant from your own cloves in future seasons)

I suggest you buy a Spring variety now - Winter varietites need several weeks of cold on them, otherwise they don't form new baby cloves)

Probably best to only plant your Winter variety in future (keeping Spring garlic through the Winter is likely to use up quite a lot of its stored energy unless you have climate-controlled storage conditions

 

Thank you.

 

Hi Golfer. The garlic in the supermarkets comes from Spain etc and might not be adapted to our climate. If you're going for a spring planting it will probably give you a worthwhile crop. I've grown it and it did OK.
Or you can buy a named variety from garden centre. T & M have a special promotion on just now for spring garlic.
I'm going to have to buy some as my garlic has been wiped this winter with the awful weather. It started years ago as Scottish winter hardy garlic from Nairn and I've saved my own for replanting for years. This is the first time I've had a problem. Oh well, back to the beginning.

 

Would that be 'Music' porcelain hardneck garlic from the Really Garlicky Company, as my re-planted, saved cloves are just only starting to peep through?

 

Yes, that's exactly where it all started Scrungee and very hardy and reliable it was. My saved cloves were great too but I think a foot of snow and temps of minus 20 has been a bit too much. I'll wait and see if anything comes up, or have a poke about in the soil, but I fear they have rotted.

 

I take comfort from my pictorial records showing how small they've been in March:



and how large by April:

 

Great pics Scrungee .
I can see you are self sufficient in garlic :D
Enjoy

 

Theres still hope Alice, after the snow melted 2 garlics pushed their leaves up here, mind you, it only got down to minus 15 ish here.[hr]
Hey, nice garlic Scrunge

 

Only around 15% of mine are up to a max height of 25mm, but I'm not worried by that as I've always understood they can withstand very low temperatures, both from experience (but not as low as they have been) and based upon what I've read in this book:



And I also understood that the seed garlic planted by The Really Garlickly Co. came from Canada (something about non-nativety producing a better crop?), but the 'sold on' seed garlic was next generation, so possibly more prone to low temps?

EDIT: 2 cloves of Christo accidentally came out today, plenty of roots, but going to be a while before those tiny shoots appear above ground:



I think it's around 300 cloves I have planted - I am rather keen on garlic!