Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

And it is DONE again! The SCGO Garlic Planting of 2023. It went quicker and easier than past years, thanks to a lot of prep work up front. cracking the bulbs ahead of time, each in its own labelled paper bags with name and number of cloves. All of the signage prepped, counted and sorted.
We planted on Monday and Tuesday 2023 October 23 and 24. Last year it was Saturday morning Oct 22 and on Sunday afternoon Oct 23.
Last year we used the 8 hole Dibbler Mark II, 8 spikes in the dibbler, each 1 3/8″ diameter and 7″ long with 5″ spacing between spikes. This caused Kevin some injury that took months to heal, so we chopped off the two end spikes and went back to 6 hole rows.

We planted in VegBed4’s eastern end going from north to south and moving the subbeds west. The signage is laminated laser printed names staples to 1×2″x1′ stakes. This naming system has shown to stand up to time the best of all others. The print is facing north, to avoid sunlight. We also printed off a new set of labels in a bigger bolder font, for ease of reading whilst standing up.

The first sub-bed had 38 rows, then 40, 43, 39, 34, 19 and 9, totalling 179 rows * 6 cloves per row = 1074 cloves!
It took just over an hour for each sub-bed and in total about 5-6 hours planting over the two days.

One last task is to cover them with straw to protect them from direct sunlight and the freeze/thaw cycles that happen over winter. Once frozen they should stay frozen until spring.

The number of varieties planted this year: To Be Counted yet.
We cut down on the number of types this year, as many of the smaller yields just did not make the cut.

The planting method:

1) we planted two stakes at the beginning and end of the subbed, a measured distance away from the fence to allow for a walking path. A string was tied to give a line to work on.

2) the subbed was raked over to get as flat of a surface as possible.

3) The first dibber went in up against the beginning stake. Each subsequent dibble lined up with the string and used the two extension bars to mark 5″ to 6″ from the last set of holes.

4) Name stakes went in on the opposite side of the string. Each row got its own namestake. As this was going on, Kim would get the next bag, check the name against the stake and start planting about 2-4″ down, or as deep as we could get.

5) Once the subbed was done, the string came off and two more beginning and end stakes were measured and driven in for the next subbed.
Then the straw went on top of the garlic, protecting it against extremes of light and temperature and soil compaction.

The 2023 Garlic Harvest is complete.
Over the course of 4 mornings, Kim dug up, organized, tied and hung up approx 1392 garlic plants.
They dried over the next 3 to 4 weeks, got cleaned, weighed and measured.
This past year we planted 75 types of garlic:

Name # bulbs totalweight(g) averageweight(g)
Armenian(2015) 14 693 50
artichoke formidable 25 571 23
chloe 6 231 39
continental(2021) 7 216 31
crème de la rasa 2019 15 629 42
czech broadleaf 8 141 18
dujanski 7 182 26
F3V 15 406 27
Fishlake Ted F1(2015) 30 823 27
Fishlake Ted F21 20 562 28
Fishlake Ted F23 40 860 22
Fishlake Ted F3 42 2116 50
Fishlake Ted F30 52 2012 39
Fishlake Ted F40 31 846 27
Fishlake Ted F7 24 536 22
french 16 288 18
genki 24 590 25
georgia crystal 7 194 28
georgia fire 7 164 23
Georgian (2018) 16 562 35
german red 17 658 39
german white 18 417 23
Hungarian(2015) 59 3528 60
inchelium 19 722 38
italian lorenz 15 379 25
italian purple (2019 perth) 31 1296 42
italian sicilian (2018) 13 530 41
japanese 8 230 29
japanese sikura 7 116 17
Khabar 4 189 47
kilkarney (2021) 8 194 24
Koji (2019) 15 538 36
Kostyns Red Russian 8 321 40
korean purple 8 156 20
lakota 14 597 43
lucian sicilian 9 927 103
Marino(2016) 26 874 34
mennonite 54 3705 69
Mexican Red Silver 14 209 15
music (2019) 18 697 39
newfoundland (2019) 24 1573 66
northern quebec 16 788 49
nothern siberian 8 174 22
northumberland 8 673 84
omas 8 277 35
polish jenn 15 509 34
port au george (2019) 20 518 26
purple glazer 24 729 30
railway creek (2019) 30 910 30
red rezan 25 399 16
Roja (2019 fa) 24 1819 76
rose de lautrec 15 228 15
Rosewood(2015) 23 1195 52
russian red 25 1127 45
Saltspring Select(2016) 16 597 37
seversky palisek 12 212 18
siberian marble 7 250 36
Sicilian Gold(2016) 17 697 41
silverskin40 26 757 29
slovak 8 265 33
spanish antihelion(2015) 31 865 28
spicy korean 18 915 51
sweet candy(2015) 24 1000 42
transylvanian 15 693 46
ttv5 14 322 23
us polish 8 192 24
us republican 7 186 27
us romanian 7 255 36
vampire 7 193 28
Wettergren(2016) 14 346 25
wild garlic 16 785 49
wyld garlic 14 417 30
yugo red (2018) 15 570 38
zemo 8 177 22
garden 3 unknown
total 1320
min 4 116 15
average 18 669 35
max 59 3705 103
loss of 1392-1320=72 bulbs

This is a little hard to read outside of a spreadsheet.. here are the top ten performers by average weight

Name averageweight(g)
lucian sicilian 103
northumberland 84
Roja (2019 fa) 76
mennonite 69
newfoundland (2019) 66
Hungarian(2015) 60
Rosewood(2015) 52
spicy korean 51
Fishlake Ted F3 50
Armenian(2015) 50

Phew! Kim worked hard and has completed the processing of the 2023 SCGO Garlic Harvest.
This involved cutting the tops and bottoms off, cleaning the dirt off and then measuring each bulb and weighing each type.
We hope to transcribe the data sometime in the next week to get a feel for what worked and what did not work this past year.
This will help us plan for the 2023 fall Garlic planting coming up in October.
I suspect that we will again this coming year, downsize from our largest crop of approx 1500 in the past years to something a lot more reasonable.
We used an 8 hole dibbler to make planting holes for the cloves last year and that was too damaging to the knees to work again, so it was cut own to a 6 hole dibbler, a 25 reduction in bulbs alone!