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superchemicalgirl said:
Keep in mind I'm in New England, but the hard garlic is what we grow up here. It likes our weather and sun patterns. Hard neck has a hard neck (duh) but it also grows scapes in the spring. I have zero experience with soft neck but know they don't form scapes.

I plant in the late fall, one clove of garlic about 3 to 4 inches apart in all directions from the next clove. It will start to come up, little green sprouts. You can, at this point, mulch it with leaves to "protect" it from winter. Sometimes I do, sometimes I forget. It doesn't seem to be a big deal in my experience. I mean we get some serious winter around here and the plants survived each year without the mulch.

In the fall I also throw chicken poop directly on the beds, usually around the same time I plant. I know, it's contrary to what we hear about chicken poo as fertilizer, but so far I haven't had a negative outcome.

Cue winter. The ground freezes, snow piles on top. For months. On end.

Spring comes, it thaws and begins to grow again.

In the spring after it starts to come up I duck poo water it a few times.

Early summer the plants will start to grow out scapes. As soon as I see them, I cut them off. It takes about 10 days for all the scapes to come up, and I just keep cutting them every few days. If you leave the scapes on you will get a bad yield because the plant will put its energy into the scape and not the head.

I continue to duck poo water them every other week or so. Then you'll see the leaves start turning brown. When the bottom two leaves are browning, I pull the heads. Leave the leaves on, and dry them for 2 weeks or so. Then you can cut the roots and leaves off to make it look like normal garlic.

I'm thinking you need to plant yours in November/December time period to allow a little bit of growing, then stop for winter, then continue to grow. You'll likely harvest early in summer.
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Thanks. I am going to just leave them there and see how they do.
 
chickensnewtome said:
Hi y'all not sure how many older members are still left on here seeing as its been 2 years since I've been on. Just wanted to say hi to all
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I remember you and congratulated you when you finished nursing school. Hope your career is progressing nicely. Sorry about your mom... that fate awaits us all at some point... Glad to have you back with us! Seems you jumped right back into poultry with that number of birds!
 
Wickedchicken6 said:
I don't know why the name Egyptian "walking" onions freaks me out just a bit...but it does. It's the walking part. *shudders* What a strange thing to wig me out.:th
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:lol:
The little pearl onions grow in clusters on the tops, some will shoot out from those clusters and grow more clusters on those tops. The weight of them will bend the plants down to the ground planting themeselves and shoot up new plants, and they'll virtually 'walk' across the garden planting themeselves.
I'm growing them more controlled. I planted the onions in a row with black plastic on each side to kill all weeds. Now I'm taking up the plastic to plant all these on each side of the originals.
They are hardy and winter over. They can be used like green onions in the spring early summer and grow vigorously. Both the top onions and bottom root onions can be eaten, the bottom onions are bigger about the size of a elongated golf ball.
Next yr when I have a ton of them I'm going to pickle them.
 

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