Growing and Harvesting Garlic Experiment | What we learned

well today's video is sponsored by keen garlic we want to thank the good folks over at cane garlic for your generous donation of all the garlic we're using in our video today thanks for sponsoring our channel [Music] well welcome back friends today we're going to try to grow some garlic in florida again uh if y'all remember i think it was about a year ago we tried to grow some softneck garlic down here in florida and we failed miserably just very disappointed very discouraged so i was talking to the folks over at king garlic and they said hey let us send you some samples of some garlic that we feel will do well in that warm climate that you have down there in florida we've had some success with it with some of our other customers and i think you'll find that these varieties will work for you and i said awesome so they sent me six different varieties they sent me three varieties of softneck garlic and they also sent me three more varieties of hardneck garlic and i was actually surprised that you know they sent me some hardneck garlic that hard neck garlic would even grow down here in this hot humid temperature but um they're they're telling me that they've had some success with it so i said really that is really good because i really like both so anyway the great people over at keene they got a great website if you want to go check it out they got all kinds of information on there about growing garlic all different varieties that you can order and they're very helpful when you order one of an order from them and you get some garlic you'll get these planting instructions that come in your package that's just full of good information that will help you be successful in growing your garden and of course if you have any questions or anything that's confusing you need cleared up give them a call or email them you know on their website because these people are really good people to work with i think you'll be really happy to work with keen garlic on trying to grow some keen uh garlic in your in your garden this fall so anyway we got the three varieties and um i'm going to give it another shot this year and we're going to watch these six varieties all the way through until we harvest it and i've made some little um name tags you know for each of these varieties i usually save my paint sticks whenever i buy paint and i write the name of the garlic on here the variety that i'm growing and i'll spray this with a clear enamel to kind of waterproof it somewhat because remember this garlic is going to take six or seven months to grow and if you have multiple varieties like i do you're going to want to make sure that you keep track of which one is which because once you settle on the one that you really like and you favor that works well in your garden then you're going to want to keep ordering that you know year after year and maybe branch out and get something different and try it every other year or so but you know basically this is how i'm going to keep track of it um there are some items that we're going to need you know today we're going to be using bone meal we're going to use bone meal in the garden area and the bed to promote a lot of phosphorus that's going to promote root growth so i'm go we're going to line the bottom of the bed with this then i'm going to i'm going to also add in black cow cow manure and i'll cultivate that in and incorporate that bone meal with that black cow with the existing soil that's in there and we'll get that all incorporated together okay another item you're going to need is some hydrogen peroxide some liquid seaweed and some baking soda and that's for our soak our pre-soak before we plant them so the way i'm going to do that is um i'm gonna take a gallon of water which i have here and the first thing i'm gonna do is add in two tablespoons of the liquid seaweed right into that gallon of water one two okay next thing is is i want i need one um one tablespoon of baking soda right in there and give it a little bit extra since i spilled some there we go baking soda then i'll take that and i kind of stir that around mix that up okay and we'll set that aside the next thing i want to do is get out six containers because i have six different varieties so i don't want to mix them up so i got my six containers and this one is going to be uh my soft neck this one is a soft deck this is a softback that one okay i think i got it where i i won't mix them up okay all right let's start off with the first one and you do all of these the same way you take the garlic open it up and you break all the cloves off of the bulb and when you do you're gonna notice that you got some big ones and you got some little ones and you got a root in and a pointy end okay so whenever you do plant this you put the root end down and the pointy end up and you want to cover the top of that with about one inch of soil okay so you can measure how deep this is plus another inch so now you see that your hole needs to be right out about three inches okay so what i do is i separate out the large cloves this is pretty good i'm just gonna i usually separate the large ones from the small ones and i'll plant all the large ones because whatever size clove that you plant that's what that that new bulb is going to form around that it's going to protect that center bulb clove and that's how big your garlic will be so if your garlic is this big then your clove will be that big if it's real small then your clove your bulb will be real small so always use the largest cloves that you have okay and this is the uh the kettle let's put those right in that bowl so beautiful okay got them all broke apart now the next thing is is i want to take these and i want to spray them with a little bit of hydrogen peroxide that's gonna get rid of some of those bad old microorganisms that's bad on the garlic so i hit it with the um with the um hydrogen peroxide and we'll let that sit for about 15 minutes so let me go ahead and get the rest of these cloves broke out and separated out and sprayed with the peroxide and when we come back we'll take it to the next step i'll be right back okay i got the hard part done and that's breaking all the cloves apart but anyway we got them all done now the next step is i want to take our solution that we made earlier of the seaweed and the baking soda and i want to add a little bit of that into each one of these i'm gonna let this soak for about an hour you know and you can soak longer if you need to you can soak overnight the king garlic said you know sometimes they'll go two or three days on a soak so really is there's no real rush once you got them soaking i do have them into the solution i'm going to let them be uh soaking up some of that liquid fertilizer okay the next step is i'm going to go over here and get the garden prepped i'm going to get that cow in there and i'm going to get the the phosphorus in there and get all that cultivated in and when i get ready to plant i'm going to use my template here because they're on five inch centers and this is what i normally use for my onion sets and so i'm going to put this into my perimeter box it makes a dimple in the soil about three quarters of an inch deep so i see my patterns that way i don't get my garlics too close together by using a five inch center so that's how i do it center the center five inches the next step i do is i take me i got a little piece of bamboo here and remember earlier we were talking about you want to be about an inch above the clove so if you take a clove and you see where that point is right there i can see that i need to be right at about an inch and that's what this line right here is it's probably a little bit high so i'm going to bring it down just a little bit let's bring that down just a little bit so i don't want to get them too deep because then they end up starting to look like leeks so i want these um i want these garlics to bulb out of course so this bottom ring right here is my mark so when i get this uh when i get this the soil dimpled i'll take this bamboo i'll stick it right down in there and i'll wallow it out just a little bit then i can set the clove in and kind of push it down just a little bit then i'll be able to cover it over the trick is you want to be approximately an inch above the tip of the clove you know you know it's not highly critical that it's exactly one inch so this plus or minus you know half an inch or so it's good enough so you're gonna probably say well i got all different size cloves just get the average you know and um put the hole in and uh cover them uh with the soil at that level okay so let me go um get this will take about an hour to soak for me it's what i usually use and in the meantime i'm gonna go over here and get all the uh you know the uh bed prep done and as soon as i get that done these should be soaked long enough and we should be able to start putting them in the ground so let's get to work [Music] do me [Music] uh [Music] [Applause] [Music] two [Music] bye good [Music] uh [Music] um [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] me [Music] be [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] well we got the job done three varieties of the hardneck and three varieties of the soft neck installed in the garden so we can watch this how to grow florida garlic experiment this year to see which one of these varieties really are going to work for me down here in florida this is november the 2nd so these should be about ready to harvest around june of next year it usually takes me six or seven months to get them ready to harvest but we'll follow along all the way until harvest on this on this video uh i also wanna once again thank keen garlic for the donation of the um six different varieties of garlic that we're going to try in our experiment here but most of all i want to thank you for encouraging me not to give up on the garlic here in florida i have to admit i was totally defeated last year when i tried to grow some soft neck down here and it was just an epic fail it was terrible i mean you know and i i did actually give up i was just not going to mess with it anymore but i talked to y'all and you encouraged me you sent me some varieties to try that have proven to be successful down here in florida with some of your other customers and i want to thank you for that so you're good people to work with and i appreciate it so we'll be back in the days ahead we'll watch the development of these garlic all the way up until harvest and um we'll keep our eye on it together so we'll see you soon [Music] well good morning friends it's only been 18 days since we started our florida garlic experiment here and i just wanted to walk you through the different varieties to show you you know the progress that they've made in the first 18 days this first one here is the chesnik red it's a hard neck as you can see it's the majority of this um little bed right here has emerged and i'm getting some true leaves starting to come up it's getting there the next one is and by the way that is a hard neck the next one is another hard neck the ivan it's got a pretty good emergence nice true leaves looks like a um looks like i've got a hundred percent germination going on here the next hard neck is the romanian red now the romanian red has not shown any sign of breaking the surface at all and that doesn't mean it won't it just at 18 days it hasn't yet so we'll will we remain hopeful keep our eye out on that romanian red the next three are the soft neck varieties the first one is the red talk good emergence plenty of true leaves looking pretty healthy pretty pleased with that one the next one and i may not be pronouncing this correctly enchilium and chileam red great emergence nice looking true leaves and it looks like i've got a hundred percent germination going on with this one as well and the last one is the kettle river another soft neck it's doing pretty good i've still got a few that have not emerged but if i look real close down in there i can see the very tip of that garlic starting to come through the surface so it's another good germination rate with true leaves coming up a little slower than the other two varieties of softneck but it's coming along so all in all i think that our our little experiment on our soft neck and hardneck garlic here in florida is uh making some progress we'll be keeping our eyes on the rest of this um and in the days ahead as this continues to grow and we'll be back shortly and give you another update looking good so far see you soon [Music] well welcome back homestead family it's been six and a half weeks since the last time we did an update with you on our stand of experimental garlic it's looking really pretty good if you look down the row you can see that everything's off and running the last time we looked at this together it had only been emerged for uh 18 days and so today makes eight weeks that this has been planted in the ground so in an eight week period it looks like it's done pretty well i thought what we do is just walk down the row and take a look at each variety like we did last time and just just show you how much it's progressed in the last six and a half weeks this first one right here is the chesnik red hardneck variety it has a mers it's starting to get some plenty of true leaves but it looks like it's having a little bit of a hard time i see some of the leaves are laying over it might have been kind of a little bit too hot for a while there on some of it it just wasn't really tolerating that but it seems to be trying to make a comeback right now as you can see the leaves are now starting to stand back up and produce some new growth out of the middle so let's just keep our eye on this one in the days ahead and um we should see this really start to pick up a little speed the next one is the ivan it's another hard neck right here it's done really well it's got some pretty strong leaf structure you can see that it's actually starting to get one two three four five six leaves tall now so it's it's getting there it's got some nice broad leaves on the um on the plant and it looks like it's doing very well the next one is the romanian red hard neck if you'll remember six and a half weeks ago when we uh updated you this one had not even emerged yet had had showed no signs of emergence since then it has popped up looks like i got a hundred percent germination on every one of them and they're they're doing well they've they've got up about three or four leaves now so they're starting to get a little bit of traction and i was really looking forward to that because this one when i looked at the raw garlic this one's looked to be my favorite variety i'm really hoping that one pulls through the next one is the red talk right here it's our soft neck a soft neck variety it's doing pretty good i've got some yellowing of the lower leaves i'm a little concerned about that that again could be from the heat that we went through a lot of heat and um may have gotten a little bit too much water that we had a couple of two or three days or we had some pretty heavy rain so i'm watching the watering i'm trying to keep that down to where it just keeps the soil just a little moist and not saturated so maybe i can pull this on through but besides that the plant is looking pretty healthy and looks like it's starting to get some new leaves out of the top so let's keep our eye on that one the next one is the intellium red it um is another soft neck again it's got a few yellowing of leaves on the bottom of the plant but it looks like it's starting to pull out with some new ones as well and some nice long tall strong leaves so i'm hoping that the cooler temperatures ahead will help this garlic the last one is the kettle river it's another soft neck variety if you remember six and a half weeks ago this one had just barely started to break the surface it had not put out any new growth yet at that time but now it's up and running it's got about four new leaves on each one got some pretty good broad leaves a slight bit of yellowing on the lower couple of leaves but that could just be normal the cooler temperatures are ahead of us so that's what we're looking forward to so that's our stand of garlic at the eight week point now this uh this saturday will be january 1st so we've got our what we call winter here in florida we have about 10 weeks ahead of us of our chili temperatures so during that 10 weeks i think that this this stand of garlic is going to improve i think it's going to enjoy the cooler temperatures a little bit better and get a lot more structure on the plant and then in the spring it should you know just really explode so we'll get back with you as this plant continues to grow and we'll do some more updates along the way uh you know during the cool cool season and we'll just take a look at how it's doing so we'll be back soon well welcome back friends our garlic stand has been growing for four months today since we planted it it made it through the winter here we are going into march now and um we had one hard freeze over the winter and about five frost so it really wasn't that hard of a winter for them they did just fine you know about a month ago i came out here after the hard freeze and they were kind of laying down a little bit and there was some yellowing but now the temperatures are starting to warm up a little bit and they're starting to stand back up and they're really starting to get some uh show some life in them so let's just walk down the uh the row here and take a look at where our garlic are here's the chesnik red they're doing really good we still have a little bit of yellowing on the bottom leaves but the rest of the plant structure looks pretty good and i'm pretty well pleased with this considering it's a hard neck garlic down here in florida but we still have the hot days ahead so i gotta really see if that heat is gonna be a challenge on this hard net here's the ivan it's another hardneck variety it's looking pretty healthy it's actually looking um more healthy than the other three it's pretty strong got some good roots structure coming out from what i can see because the stems are you know pretty big around there's a little bit of yellowing on the leaves and um and they're but they look very healthy and i think they're gonna do just fine here's the romanian red it's doing pretty good it's made it through the winter and we still have the challenge of the hot days of florida ahead but considering uh the way they look right now i think that this may be a variety we'll be able to grow it's a little bit of yellowing and some of that is from the hard freeze and some of it is just because you know it needs to be uh fertilized so we'll um keep our eye on this in the days ahead because i really want to be able to grow some hard neck if i can just get through this heat that's coming up here's the red talk it's a soft neck this soft neck variety looks to be doing really well it's coming out pretty strong here uh in the first few days of spring and um i you know this one should be a little bit more tolerant of the heat that's coming up but looking at the way this the plants look right now they look like they're pretty promising here's the inchelum uh the inchellum is looking really good it's in fact it looks like it the enchillum red looks like it may even be the strongest looking plant of the three varieties that i have of softnecks right now it's coming on pretty good so i'm looking forward to seeing what this does in the next couple of months here's the kettle river the kettle river looks to be doing very well um lots of uh good leaf and stem development i'm not just assuming that the uh that the bulbs are starting to expand out now this one looks to be the weakest of the other two um soft neck varieties but it does look to be working but and it doesn't look quite as strong and healthy and vibrant as the other two so anyway there's our three hardneck and our three soft neck well now that spring has um arrived here in florida these plants are now in need of a boost of fertilizer and i want to step over here to the seed starting area and show you the two the fertilizers that we're going to be using on our garlic and how we mix them up and what the i'm going to be doing is fertilizing these with a liquid fertilizer every 14 days or so and i will continue to do that throughout the life of these until i start to see the scapes appear when the scapes appear i'll discontinue using the fertilizer but i think at this point they are ready to start taking on some fertilizer and taking some of that up into the plant and down into the roots so let's head over to the seed starting area on the planting table so i can show you these two products okay it's time to get started on our fertilizer this is what keen garlic recommended for fertilizing the garlic in the springtime there's two two components that go to this mix one is called cx-1 this is a biological concentrate and the other one is a fertilizer and this is a 307 fertilizer nice and gentle gives it just enough of that nitrogen to get it going i don't want to give it too much nitrogen because i don't want to give it too much leaf growth when i really want at this point is a lot of bulb growth but this this little bit of fertilizer that i'm giving it right now should really get the plant in an overall healthy condition to come out of the spring coming out of winter and going into spring and it should just explode so what i do is i take one gallon of water and whenever nancy uh is not home she had to go to the store today she seems to volunteer to let me use some of her stuff so i take her her little flower pot that she's using i i dismantled the little sprinkler head on the top i got a gallon of water in here and what i add is one tablespoon of the concentrate and one tablespoon of the fertilizer this is a powder then i mix this together and i just pour it right directly over the uh the the garlic it says that what we should do is try to avoid getting it right on the leaves if it's in direct sunlight but today's very overcast so um i felt pretty good about just going ahead and putting it right on right over the uh the plant and just saturate the whole plant with this and what i'll do is i'll continue to water this right down the line every two weeks until we see the scapes [Music] well we got all the garlic fertilized i'm running the irrigation on there now i kind of want to rinse that fertilizer off of the leaves that i where i uh just poured it right on top of the leaves that'll rinse it off the rinse it all the leaves and it'll kind of work it on down into the soil where i really want it so that's the regiment that i'm going to continue with for the next several weeks ahead i'm going to continue to do this every 14 days so we'll be back in the days ahead after these uh garlic have a a little bit more time to uh start coming to life with this new warm weather that's coming in so we'll see you soon [Music] well welcome back friends our little garlic experiment has been growing out here for seven months today so i thought what we would do today is go through the bed and pull up each variety and keep them separated and let's take a look at the results of this little experiment i've got my uh my little garden book i always y'all always see me working out of and i've made some notes along the way and i've made a little chart up in here see if you can see this so we'll uh take a look at what we got today and we'll make some notes on here to uh determine which one of these varieties or it may be you know one or more of them that we could uh start using here in our florida homestead i have definitely learned a few lessons along the way this year on this experiment and i want to incorporate them this fall so um let's go ahead and pull these up and let's see what kind of a result that we're getting this first one here is the um the chesnik red it's a hard neck it looks like this one here has tolerated the heat just fine and it's got some really good um the plant looks really good itself now i don't know what the bulbs have done underneath but as far as the the plant itself it looks like it was able to take the heat really with no problem it's just i need to adjust my plant and schedule a little bit this next one here this is ivan this is another hard neck it did not look like it fared well with the heat it didn't grow as big as a rust i don't think this is a good candidate for me here but it doesn't mean that i won't try it again one day but from from this experiment from what i'm learning on this experiment it really didn't didn't work out the next one here is a romanian red it's another hard neck it had a beautiful bulb it was actually my favorite bulb i was really hoping for the best on this one but it doesn't look like it was taken to this heat very well at all and i've had a lot of little a lot of them have already failed it it looks like it might be a struggle for in my area the next one's the red talk it's a soft neck it looks like it did pretty good um the plant itself is really healthy and it's tolerating the heat it's got some big stalks down there toward the bottom so i'm really hoping that we get some nice bulbs out of it it might be a good candidate for future planting the next one is the in shelling red this is another um soft neck it looks like it did pretty good with the heat as well i got some decent-sized looking stalks on so this one might look like a good candidate you know for our florida garden as well and the last one here is the uh the kettle red it's another soft neck it was about middle of the road on tolerating the heat i've got some bulbs in there that did pretty good it looks like i could see the big stalks on them so hopefully this one may possibly be a candidate for the future it's all going to now depend on you know how good the bulbs look and adjusting my planting schedule etc but let's go ahead and get them up and let's take a look at the size of the bulbs and see what we got what i'm using today is this uh this potato rake is a long-handled potato rake it makes the job a little easier for me with my back the way it is if i just go underneath the bulbs and i can loosen them up like that instead of trying to pull them out by hand and it keeps me from breaking them off too bad [Music] me [Music] me [Music] me [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey [Music] hmm [Music] okay we uh we got our six varieties of um garlic all set out here right here is the uh the hardness the three varieties of hardnecks and right here's the three varieties of softneck so let's take a look at you know how we did and let's see if we can come up with a decision on what we want to commit to for growing in our fall garden this year i think we're on track now let's take a look at these up close okay let me start with the hard necks this chesnik red right here uh it performed the best out of the three the chesnik red the ivan and the romanian red the chestnut red started to develop bulbs and it had a really good plant structure that was able to tolerate the heat really it looked like with no problem it was the best out of the three hardnecks i think that this is a good candidate that we would like to go with for this fall and our garden and we'll commit and you know a raised bed and space them out and give them plenty of room and you know do them correctly instead of an experimental type bed we're going to go all the way so i think that this will be a good one a good candidate for us the ivan if you take a look at it it never really developed much of a bulb it had a really hard time with the heat and that could have been you know from my planting schedule but this is the i-van as you can see it really never really developed very well and the romanian red it had a real struggle with the heat this is an ivan the romanian red right here another hard neck it really is um it was a total failure for me and the way i did it this year but i don't think that these two would be a good candidate for me here in florida so i think we're going to stick with the chesnik red for this fall let's take a look at the soft neck okay here's our three varieties of the soft neck this is the red talk the kettle river and the ancillium the red talk definitely came out on top on this experiment it's starting to develop a decent looking bulb just a little bit young as all and the plant itself was able to tolerate the heat down here i don't really see it having any problems with the heat so this is a good candidate for us out of the three that i would call red talk the best the kettle river looked like it could be a really good one for us down here as well it's got a much bigger stalk on it and the bulb was really getting there but you know it's it was early in the year for it but i think that this is another good candidate for florida we can try this another year but i think this fall we want to go with the red talk and here's the intillium red it looked like it did pretty good as well it was starting to bulb up a little bit it tolerated the heat very well all three of these varieties i had no problem with heat so i think it was all um you know the downfall was a planting schedule and chill hours so these are the um the the results of the six varieties and let's talk a little bit about the lessons learned on this experiment this year okay here's my little book the main lesson that i learned this year is that we simply just don't have enough chill hours down here in florida to uh just go out and plant our garlic in the ground in the fall and uh let it winter over and hope for the best in the spring i've learned this lesson the hard way so what we're going to have to really do is pay attention to the cold stratification it is absolutely required down here there's no way i can get that so what we're going to do this fall is i'm going to order my garlic in and i'll place the garlic in the refrigerator for about two months prior to planting and that should give me enough chill hours then put it in in december and that way i'll go into the cooler months when i plant it instead of it still being so hot as it was this year when i planted um that's an important thing that a mistake that i made was i was trying so hard to avoid the heat in the spring i was so worried about that rapid warm-up in florida that i get here that i was afraid that the garlic would just completely fail as soon as it hit march time frame and that proved to not be the case here um these varieties tolerated the heat just fine i think if i shift my planting schedule till december 1st and that'll give me approximately 70 days of cool temps after i plant them but if you wish to combine that 70 days with the two months of the cold stratification that i artificially introduced them to with the refrigerator that should give me a greatly improved bulb development that way i can i keep them cold and october and november then plant them in december and it's starting to get cold here january and february is cold and by the time march gets here these plants will be coming will be emerging and getting strong and i think the varieties that i've looked at here have proven to be heat tolerant so by doing this cold stratification getting them in at a different planting schedule as of december 1st by the time march gets here they won't have any problem at all tolerating the heat and i can let these things run on out until june or july give me a good solid seven months in the ground after they've been cold cold stratification and i think that what we will end up with is really some successful harvest of garlic here so it took me a you know a couple of years to get to this point so uh i'm not going to give up i've looked at these um these are these are my varieties i think that the intelium red and the kettle river and the red talk are all fine for growing down here in the florida heat and these are all three soft necks the one that i'm going to commit to this fall will be the red talk i don't think i can do anything to improve my romanian red or the ivan i that just they just couldn't take it so i don't think those will work out for me it could have may very well have been my own fault but as far as based on this little experiment these guys didn't work but the chesnik red was a very good heat tolerant uh garlic and it was doing a real good on the bulb development i just need to change my planting schedule and introduce them to some cold stratification and i'll use that as my fall planting that'll be the one i commit to so this fall will have a good solid row of chesnick red hardneck and a strong solid row of the red talk soft neck well there you go another lesson learned and from a mistake and we learn from our mistakes which is what makes our thumbs green right anytime i see somebody that's a real good gardener and he does really great i look at that guy and i say that guy's made a lot of mistakes in his garden the reason for that is is every time you make a mistake you learn twice as much as you did if you had a successful harvest so don't be uh letting up of crop failure or something just doesn't work out when you're you know discouraged it to the point where you quit actually as at that point you should be taking notes making some adjustments and then try it again the next year and just don't give up so we'll be back in the fall we're going to try our two varieties of hard neck and soft neck we'll get them in the ground and we'll follow that one and i'm pretty much very very confident that this fall and next spring that we will have a very good harvest of garlic and i think we'll have the solution made for uh for our growing our florida garlic here with the heat and our sandy soil so i hope that our video helps you i hope it brought a little smile to your face and maybe some peace to you today so until me and nancy see you in the fall when we try it again always remember buys hands we are fed give us lord our daily bread amen have a blessed day [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Hollis and Nancys Homestead

Views: 180,258

Keywords: hollisnancyshomestead, keengarlic, garlic experiment, how to grow garlic, what we learned, florida garlic experiment, experiment, garlic, harvesting garlic, growing garlic

Id: 8EkGDm1VA_M

Length: 52min 38sec (3158 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 08 2022