Garlic and Onions

I only planted 8 cloves of Chet's red garlic last fall. Only 7 came up. Of those, I did something with 5, leaving just 2 for planting this fall. The ones from the previous season had sprouted this spring, and I planted a number of them. I harvested all of the spring planting, leaving none of them for seed for the coming year. Of the 2 garlic that I set aside for planting, I was able to get about 40 cloves. I kept 32 of them for my own garden and gave the remainder to my friend Steve at church.

I planted the 32 during the week. Nothing has come up yet. I don't need them all to sprout, but I am glad to keep the variety growing in my garden.

Last fall, I scattered onion seed in one of my beds. I think my reasoning had been that trying to plant the year before in prespecified positions hadn't worked well. The sprouting was spotty. But there were two problems last year. First, there were just too many onions that sprouted. Second, I think all the seed came from first-year plants, meaning that for what is supposed to be a biannual, there was no "bi" in when the plants went to seed. As a result, just about every onion in my garden went to seed again this year. Essentially, my onions became annuals.

This year, I am attempting to solve both problems. I am attempting to solve the first problem of scattering seed by going back to a 4-per-square-foot planting system. I used napkins and a glue stick to allow me to create little patches of seeds. Then, I cut up the napkin so I could plant each bunch of seeds separately. I picked a napkin as the medium to glue the seeds on because I think the paper will dissolve pretty rapidly once wet, allowing the seed to send its roots down. I planted these today, 4-per-square-foot, more or less evenly throughout the same bed in which I planted the garlic. (The garlic occupy 2 of the 12 feet, the onions the remaining space.) I hope to have about 150 or so onions from this. That will be plenty to harvest next June.

The second issue was using annual seeds instead of biannual seeds. I purposely kept about 10 onions (long red Florence) alive through the winter and let them go to seed the second year. I used those seeds, as I trust that only a few will got to seed early. That variety was generally a better variety for not going to seed early when I have raised them in the past.

Now seeds and cloves just have to sprout.