March 24, 2016

Good morning, Last year I let my garlic grow scapes to maturity. Scapes look like they would be flower heads on gGoodarlic but in reality are bulbets that contain many little garlic cloves. Most of these cloves are less than a 1/16 of an inch. Pretty small. It takes two years from planting these tiny cloves to get mature bulbs. Before I sell any of my garlic I always hold out next years crop. These usually are the cream of the crop. Literature that I have read sites that over the course of time these “saved “ seed become less vigorous. It was suggested to either purchase new seed garlic bulbs or raise fresh seed garlic bulbs from scapes.

One year I did plant some of these bulbets in the garden with zero luck. This year I have started a bunch in the house in flats. Seeing how tiny these young garlic's are and how they look just like weed grass, that year I may have inadvertently pulled them as weeds. I am in the process of potting these tiny plants on with hopes of growing them into rounds. These are single clove garlic's that can be 1/2 inch to an inch in diameter. These rounds will then be planted for mature garlic bulbs. All of the bulbs from this crop will be used for the following years crop. So there is at least 2 more years to see how vigorous this new”seed garlic” will be.

There is the possibility that this garlic may also be more adapted to our part of the world. Who knows?

Why do this? One reason is: I have never done this and just seems like a neat thing to try. Worst case scenario is the tried and true “been there got that “T” shirt. Another reason is that seed garlic is fairly expensive upwards of 19 or 20 dollars a pound. This little experiment surely will make me appreciate this value.

On another note, a friend recently forwarded a very interesting vegetable list. The list is for a wide variety of vegges that are resistant to various garden pests, along the line of fungus, virus and the like.

The neat thing is there are OP seed included in this list although the majority are hybrids. Here is the link. http://vegetablemdonline.ppath.cornell.edu/Tables/YellSquashTable.html This link takes you to the yellow summer squash list but other veggies are located at the bottom.

I have found that around the middle of August when the nights begin to cool and the humidity is still high, powdery mildew raises its ugly head on the summer squash. Using the above mentioned list I found some mildew resistant zukes and crooknecks. High Mowing Seed has developed both of these squash as OP's to combat this pest. It will be interesting to see how affective these varieties are at resisting powdery mildew. I had already started my squash bed when I became the benefactor of this list. But the succession to this planting will be from High Mowing Seeds. And since they are OP, I will see if this trait can be improved. The trick is to wait until the mildew starts to develop then flag the plants that start to show the signs last then work with saving seed from these plants. Gotta love genetics.

Yes I am seeing okra emerging. Hopefully next week I can plant the remaining beds.

This week I anticipate harvesting chard, kale, spinach, and lettuce. I still have sun chokes and butternut squash too.