Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

A quick snap of Vegbed5 for historical records… Approx 960 garlic cloves were planted on 2020 October 25 & 28 in the eastern section (left side of image). Potatos went in to the southern section (center of image).
The black composter was moved in about a month ago to provide ease of access and maybe it would get more use.
The garlic was covered with straw for the winter. We will be removing it shortly to lay out the drip irrigation lines and may put it back again soon afterward.

vegbed5 north to south east to west +5C
Row 1 Oct 25 50 dibbles * 6 = 300 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
armenian x2
artichoke x3
barcelona red x1
bubbas chesnock x1
carpathian x1
chesnock red x1
chilian x1
creme delarose x1
czech x2
dujanski x1
F3V x2
Fishlake Ted F1 x2
Fishlake Ted F21 x3
Fishlake Ted F23 x6
Fishlake Ted F3 x4
Fishlake Ted F30 x8
Fishlake Ted F40 x2
Fishlake Ted F7 x2
French x2
unknown x1
genki x2
georgia crystal x1
georgia fire x1

Row 2 Oct 25 51 dibbles * 6 = 306 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
georgian x2
german red x2
german white x2
hungarian x2
inchileum x3
italian purple x3
italian sicilian x2
japanese
japanese sikua
khabar
koji
korean purple
kosytns red russian
lakota
lucian sicilian x2
magnificent
marino x2
mennenite x6
metechi
music x4
newfoundland x2
northern quebec x4
northumberland x2
omas
persian star
phillipino
polish jenn

row 3 oct 28 44 dibbles * 6 = 264 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
port au george x2
purple glazer x3
railway creek x4
roja 2019FA x2
rose de la trec x2
rosewood x2
blank russian red check notes
russian red x2
russian red 2019 x2
saltsrping select x2
seversky palisek x2
shouldice
siberian marble
sicilian gold x3
silverskin40 x4
slovak x3
solent wight
spanish antihelion x3
spicy korean x2
sweet candy x2

vegbed7 early garlic (planted apart from main crop) 8 dibbles * 6 = 48 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
aglio russo creo x1
acropolis greek x1
chiliean silver x2
italian lorenz x2
mexican red silver x2

vegbed10 last of early garlic (planted apart from main crop) 7 dibbles * 6 = 42 ( each dibble=6 holes/cloves)
red rezan x3
spanish roja x3
tibetan x1

Grand Planting Total 2020 = 300 + 306 + 264 + 48 + 42 = 960

This years 2020 garlic harvest was better than average. We harvested across a few weeks, as it came ready, and finished in early August. After drying in the leanto for 4 weeks, we cut off the tops, cut off the roots, cleaned up the bulb and then weighed and measured its size using a garlic sizing template.

We are now (still) in the process of transcribing that data to get averages across the 90 odd types that we grew this past season.
I am of the opinion that the drip tape irrigation system contributed to the better than average harvest. We typically watered for 2 hours every day or every other day during the hot dry season in June and July. Then we stopped irrigation closer to harvest, letting the garlic start to dry.

Garlic was in Vegbed4 last season and will be going into Vegbed5 this season, as we always rotate the crops from bed to bed each year. The tomatos are still there at this time but we hope to clear the bed this weekend.
There will be a lot of tomatos and seeds in that bed when we are done so we start to prep the bed for a mid to late October planting of garlic cloves.

Saturday we hope to clear the bed of tomatos, then till it over to loosen up the soil and give the weed seeds (or in this case tomato seeds) a chance to germinate and grow a bit with the rains that are coming Sunday and Monday. After a couple of weeks (now into early October), we will lay down as many bags of composted sheep and cow manure that we can find (up to 20) and till the bed again, mixing it in while killing off the weeds (and tomatos) that have since grown.

Then a week or three later, just before the day we determine to plant, we will cultivate it (a shallower pass this time) just to get the weeds out.
String lines will be laid out, and this time 2′ between beds not the 1′ of last year. This is to help keep the bed in a straight line. It was a little too tight to walk down the beds.

We plant around 1000 bulbs, which we will have spent 3 or 4 evenings prior, precracking the bulbs to get out the cloves, of the seed garlic that we have selected even earlier. It makes for a nice few hours in the garage drinking wine while opening up the bulbs. They go into individually labelled paper bags.
We also gather up a master list of types, print off laminated labels to staple onto 1″x2″ x1′ stakes that mark each row.

On the day of planting we use a dibbler, a 2×4 with 6 wooden dowels spaced 6″ apart to create 6 planting holes at once, in a straight line. Then the next 6 are put in 8″ away and so on and so on. We get about 24/ 2/3 or 36 rows in each bed. Each bed is 30″ wide plus 24″ for a path gives approx 4.5′ for each bed and path. That goes into a 25′ vegbed5 six times giving us room for a total of 6*36*6=1296 cloves. Once each bed is complete, the string line gets moved over to the next bed.

Bag labels are double checked, cloves go in the hole, are raked over and the namestake pushed in at the path end of the row. Over and over again until we can take no more. This usually takes many hours on a nice morning, then a few more in the afternoon.

Finally, straw is set out, lightly covering the garlic to protect it through the winter, mostly from the freeze/thaw cycle that sometimes occurs in midwinter.

Hopefully the garlic will have a couple of weeks to germinate, establish some roots before the next heavy frost hits and stays.

You can also plant in spring after the ground has thawed. We have done this as well and basically the garlic is 2-3 weeks behind in development over a fall planting.

Over the weekend we installed out first irrigation system, the Irrigation Direct Canada “Drip Irrigation Watering Kit for Row Crops”.
We installed it in vegbed4, where the fall planted garlic crop resides.

A standard system of garden water hoses takes water to the vegbed. From there is:
a cutoff valve
a mechanical timer good for up to 120 minutes
a vaccuum breaker/backflow valve
a filter
a pressure reducer
an adapter to connect to the main line tubing.

From there were tried out two methods, one line down the centre of a garlic row, each row consisting of 6 cloves/plants and running approx 20-25′. We did this on two of the rows.

The tape looks to be pretty heavy duty with a water drip emitter every 8″.
Because of this spacing we also tried out another method on three of the rows, that being two tape lines down each row.
If we find that the single tape lines do not deliver enough water, we can easily move the two singles into a double line and install a new double.

We have enough to run another system in vegbed5, where the tomatos will be transplanted into in a couple of weeks