Setting 41 on 6-15, 7-8, 7-31, and 8-23 feel free to join in at any time

[FridayYet]

That's great SJ!

 

[SFrati]

I just put 14 fertilized eggs under my broody hen. She wasnt too happy I moved her off of her golf balls and onto the pile of eggs but quickly took to them. Tonight she sat diligently and hopefully she will keep going until everybody hatches.

 

[scflock]

.

"Never ascribe to blind luck something for which you can reasonably take credit for"...;-]

That should be my motto. I'm pretty good at taking credit for anything. Here's my lockdown stats. I'll have to admit, it's copy and paste from the other thread. I just don't feel like typing it all again:

Ok, lockdown update. Remember I said 70% fertility? That's because I only candled the first row, had 2 clears, and stopped. I projected that for the rest of the set. Well, those were the only 2 clears

22 made it to lockdown. 2 I'm almost certain are late quitters, but not certain enough to pull them. There's no blood ring, but the development is a little less than the others. The eggs are too dark to see much more than a shadow, but I saw definite movement in 6 or 7. All I can do now is

I won't be topping Amy's last hatch, but I will be satisfied with 11, ecstatic with 15 or more, and triumphant with 20. My money is somewhere between satisfied and ecstatic

Edit: Humidity was pretty constant at 40%

 

[sjturner79]

Hatch complete.
30 set
Humidity at 20% mostly , with a rise to 55 and then fall back daily.
Tried to keep 100.1 f temp but incubator temp wanders frequently. Highest temp seen was 102.5
22 eggs locked down. Only one discarded egg showed signs of development, but had died cause I dropped it on the earlier candling and broke the shell so it dried out.
3 discarded at hatch time discovered to to be scrambles. 3 dead without pipping.
1 pipped but suffocated.
15 live chicks.

 

[scflock]

Hatch complete.
30 set
Humidity at 20% mostly , with a rise to 55 and then fall back daily.
Tried to keep 100.1 f temp but incubator temp wanders frequently. Highest temp seen was 102.5
22 eggs locked down. Only one discarded egg showed signs of development, but had died cause I dropped it on the earlier candling and broke the shell so it dried out.
3 discarded at hatch time discovered to to be scrambles. 3 dead without pipping.
1 pipped but suffocated.
15 live chicks.

So technically 15/19 viable eggs. That's very good

 

[NTBugtraq]

Yes. I have 10 fluffies. 3 not quite fully devolved, 1 pipped, 1 zipping , 1 cheeping and 4 eggs doing nothing.

That's fantastic

 

[WalnutHill]

NT, I harvested my garlic last week (a mere 100 bulbs) and have a couple of questions. Most of my garlic is composed of many very small cloves, perfect for studding a roast or fermenting in giadiniera or stuffing in olives. I've just left some in the garden every year, then harvested about 75% of it when the necks start drying. How do I get better results? Soil is sandy loam, very fertile, but partly shaded.

 

[NTBugtraq]

NT, I harvested my garlic last week (a mere 100 bulbs) and have a couple of questions. Most of my garlic is composed of many very small cloves, perfect for studding a roast or fermenting in giadiniera or stuffing in olives. I've just left some in the garden every year, then harvested about 75% of it when the necks start drying. How do I get better results? Soil is sandy loam, very fertile, but partly shaded.

1. Lift all garlic now, gently remove as much soil as possible, and cure. Cure by hanging them with their stems intact and roots left on. Hang for 2 weeks out of direct sunlight, ideally with some air passing over them (consider a fan, and think about places like a carport, shed, under a deck...) Make sure no 2 garlic bulbs are touching each other while curing.
2. Once cured, trim roots short, cut stem off, put in paper bags in a cool place with fairly good humidity (e.g. 50% or better, if possible). If you can't get that humidity, wet the top of the paper bags a little (not to where the wet touches the garlic). Check once a week and remove any that rot, and to re-wet the bags.
3. Plant again in the fall, ideally, 2 weeks before your first hard frost. Consider bone meal or some other potassium in your soil 2 weeks before you plant your garlic, as well as some form of nitrogen supplement (2 years old if its manure). I plant in late October.
4. Cover your planted area with some form of mulch, or even garden cloth. You want to keep as many weed spores out of there as possible in the spring, so mulching in fall serves that purpose well. Plants may appear above the soil this fall, don't worry about it, that growth can die off from frost and the plant is no worse for wear. However, removing the mulch (if its restrictive, like ground cloth) should be done before the plants break soil.
5. Keep well weeded, give it a middling amount of water throughout the growing season (e.g. up to the middle of June.), and fertilize with a high potassium fertilizer that won't kill your green stalks. Watering depends greatly on so many things its hard to give advice, but you don't want to promote bulb rot, yet you don't want it to get so dry that the leaves pre-maturely die off.
6. If growing hard neck varieties (those that put up a scape, e.g. a garlic flower), cut the scape off before it makes a 2nd full turn. Cut close above the last set of leaves on the stalk. (btw, it is a great food to eat, I turn it into pesto, but you can eat it as you would beans or asparagus, raw or cooked.) If you can, let a couple of scapes survive. Taking the scape off tells the plant to put all attention into the bulb. However, the flower creates "bulbils", or mini-garlic clones. They are actually more true forms of the garlic than the cloves are, but take 3 years to become a full bulb. Always plant a few every year, and a few of their progeny every year, as this will re-vitalize your garlic strain.
7. If the stalk gets brown at the ground, pull, your ground is too wet. Stalk should die back from top to bottom, pull garlic when the stalk is 2/3's died back. (usually towards the end of July, but it depends based on where you are.)
8. Start at #1 again.

And of course always enjoy garlic in everything you can get it into. Having eaten garlic, you are the poster child for all those places that say they are "fragrance free zones".

BTW, if you have clay soils, or soils that don't hold water well, consider Jersey Greensand as an additive. 100% organic and infuses more than 30 micro-organisms into your soil.

 

[NTBugtraq]

NT, I harvested my garlic last week (a mere 100 bulbs) and have a couple of questions. Most of my garlic is composed of many very small cloves, perfect for studding a roast or fermenting in giadiniera or stuffing in olives. I've just left some in the garden every year, then harvested about 75% of it when the necks start drying. How do I get better results? Soil is sandy loam, very fertile, but partly shaded.

BTW, there are several thousand varieties of garlic, and every plot of the same garlic is actually slightly different, so there are literally millions of varieties. Some have very large cloves, and few of them. Others have many cloves, and they're small. Do you know what variety you are growing? If not, did it come from a store or another grower...can you ask them what it was? Finally, garlic seed is just great bulbs of a garlic variety, the cloves then are the "seed". Consider buying some new seed garlic. Typically, a bulb has 5-8 cloves, and there are usually 5-8 bulbs per pound...and a pound up here is typically $10. So that would be 36 new bulbs next year for $10, or $30 for the hundred you're used to.

I have 12 varieties here, all very hot and very spicy, but there is a taste difference between each of them...and that's saying something considering I smoke and drink rye straight (e.g. taste buds are shot). Have a look around for seed garlic suppliers near you, and then read up on their varieties, you will be amazed. Unfortunately, I don't think I can ship to the States.

 

[NTBugtraq]

NT, I harvested my garlic last week (a mere 100 bulbs) and have a couple of questions. Most of my garlic is composed of many very small cloves, perfect for studding a roast or fermenting in giadiniera or stuffing in olives. I've just left some in the garden every year, then harvested about 75% of it when the necks start drying. How do I get better results? Soil is sandy loam, very fertile, but partly shaded.

Geez, which I had thought of all of this at one time.

Consider planting buckwheat in where your garlic was. Turn it in (or feed it to chickens) before it goes to seed (turn in at least the roots). Then plant mustardseed, and when it flowers, turn it in and plant again. When turning in the 2nd crop of mustard seed, add your potassium/bone meal.

Garlic, if grown in the same plot, can attract nematodes. Mustardseed is a repellant for the bad nematodes that attack garlic. Buckwheat is a good nitrogen fixer, and a fast crop.