Garlic Harvest in a Very Rainy Year. When Best to Harvest. Sorting & Curing the Garlic for Storage. 

It's a real pleasure! Thank you for commenting!

Thank you!

Thank you! ❤

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thank you Andréanne! I'm going to start taking some wider views before zooming in from now on! Good luck with the garlic!

Thank you! This means a lot to me!

Hello, I'm also in central Florida. I agree, the tips are beneficial to all gardeners, no matter where they are.

@@kpowell8907 Thank you!

Thank you Happyhobbit!

Thank you! ❤

I'd love to plant more stuff, but everything else, as you can see from the size of the weeds, is keeping me real busy.😊

Thank you!

Here's one video from this past winter. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zihvw0RtU-Y.htmlsi=kHY7YyOux8CvNgGo

Thank you! And here is a second video from this past winter. The first one was in English. This one, you'll have to turn on the subtitles, as it's in French. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gWbYptEzGh0.htmlsi=br-m2QqxKPWtRvFE

I put my garlic in oilve oil also dry it for garlic power baked garlic too

@@shanacookthecanukgypsy9527 Thank you! Sounds so good! I love baked garlic, especially baked garlic that's cut in half and doused in lots of olive oil! We also use the peals with our dried herbs to make powder mixes.

I actually would like to try planting some cabbage later next year, so as not to have it all at the same time.

Thank you very much! Here are some you could check out, until we do more: ru-vid.com/group/PLDRPDy9wP0_nJsV9qtvUr4WaxiUxJpuU5&si=8-s9YwHRmkc3Nn6W And here are some more, but you'll have to turn on your subtitles to watch them, unless you understand French: ru-vid.com/group/PLDRPDy9wP0_m079ek-cgNljLepQxstSGV&si=8qVv4b3K1KtPmvhR

I probably could have harvested at least a week earlier. They grew so much faster than normal this year. Do you shred your leaves or put them on whole? I guess the garlic just pushes through. I always have a ton of autumn leaves and cover my garden with them, but I have hesitated to cover the garlic with them.

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With all the hot, rainy and sunny weather we've had, it really does feel like a tropical rainforest here! I'm not familiar with Ruth Stout. Just looked her up. I'll have to have a read!

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture The main thing for me is what weeds will get introduced, and how much weed pulling is there time for? This year has been the experiment. Here wild turkeys are the only pests, so what needs to be protected should be. Weeds pull out very easily through a decent mulch layer. Even quack grass is easy to manage, and I'm getting primed to try the baking soda method in a few spots just to see.

@@thenextpoetician6328 You're right about weeds and mulch, and about how much time there is for weed pulling. I'm always trying to see which plants tolerate more weeds.

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture Might as well. There are enough good weeds I'm fine when they show up. Purslane has rocketed up my list this year. I have some beauties.

@@thenextpoetician6328 I love purslane in a sandwich in place of lettuce. Gives it a real juicy crunch!

it depends if you are wanting to use them for culinary or medicinal (health) use. i process most mine in aged garlic as my main use is medicinal. judging from what you already do, i would guess your main use is in cooking which destroys the medicinal molecules which are photo and temperature sensitive. this is why, despite 50+yrs of r&d, the sulfur compounds of the aged garlic still cannot be synthesized by the pharmaceuticals.

@@AlsanPine you can use garlic raw in salad dressings and other applications in the kitched, adding it in, crushed or minced, at the end.

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture yes, of course you can. i was just referring to what most people do and use it as a "spice" in cocking which destroys its health effects. on the other hand, aged garlic is far more powerful than raw garlic due to the slow exothermic reaction between the sulfur compounds of garlic and acetic acid of vinegar over 7 years. so we can use garlic for taste only, as is health benefits, or supercharged medicine. all valid uses if you grow enough 🙂

@@AlsanPine So to age the garlic, what kind of vinegar do you put it in. I would definitely like to try this. Thank you, as always, for your very detailed and informative comments.

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture i use gallon glass jars, fill with fresh garlic cleaned, skinned and dry Leave an inch or two from top empty. then throw in a pich of salt, and fill with organic vinegar higher than the garlic. some will float, that is ok. then i place a plastic lid on it that is too big with enough coffee filters or paper towels to get a press fit. the idea is to not seal the lid. it must breathe or you will have an explosion! the chemical reaction is slow but it is exothermic. it has to breathe. you can also add other spices like peppers, mint, etc but i like it simple. then i place it in a cool dark place. basement, root cellar, or the like. for us up north, cool is not a problem. garlic is stable up to 104F or 100F to be safe! it does have to be in a very dark place, however. you need to check the jars periodically (2-3 times a year) and top off the vinegar as the level goes down. i make 2 gal every year as i consume 2 gal of aged garlic per year. i have a clove every day. you just get a progressively aged product. you can eat it at any time but as it ages, the garlic turns dark until the 7th year it will be really dark and it will lose its spicy spunk because those sulfur compounds are now gone and reacted with the acid. so the taste is much milder but tangy with vinegar with a hint of sweet. you also will not have garlic body odor when you eat it. medicinally, it is the most potent product known to man!. in fact, aged garlic was more valuable than gold in the ancient world. in the 90's when i was still doing research, i found a paper by a guy who spent 25yrs documenting the chemical reaction for a pharmaceutical company who hoped to be able to synthesize the compounds but alas, they are photo and temp sensitive and cannot be synthesized. decades of research and millions of dollars which helped establish the medical benefits of aged garlic which cannot be used to make big pharma richer!

That's hemp I grew from seed. I decided not to put it in because I ended up doing nothing with all the seed from last year. It's all mixed up with bits of leaves and so we're nervous about using the seeds for making milk and cheese type stuff, with all those bits of leaves. We don't want any unusual reactions. It's hard to separate, as hemp is very sticky.

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture if i was local i could identify the hemp quickly for you as i'm allergic to the fibers and oils at least topically. i'd actually love to see it grown commercially for fibers again.

@@grenwood6551 What do you mean you could identify the hemp quickly? Our difficulty was this: I grew it for the seed. I bought some cannabis seed from a seller who planted it to give the seeds to her birds. So I planted it to harvest the seeds for us, as I have read that it is high in protein, and I have bought hemp protein products before and they taste good. But when I harvested the seed and processed it, it just had too much leaf bits for us to be comfortable to use it. I don't know enough about the difference between hemp seed and cannabis seed and if the leaves have the same compounds as the female flower buds, etc. etc.. Hemp and cannabis have been so maligned that even though I grew it, I'm a bit scared to use the seeds, even though theoretically, I don't believe I should have any problem.

Because we keep the peels to use in our spice mixes, it's like it's less tedious. You can check out this video for what we do with the peels. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-zihvw0RtU-Y.htmlsi=kHY7YyOux8CvNgGo

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Plant wormwood or thyme close to your cabbage. Thyme works well because it stays relatively small, and it works as a good companion perennial for almost any vegetable, so will help in the area for other plants if you decide to change your cabbage's position, which is a good thing to do every couple of years. Onions, garlic and most aromatic herbs help as well. I used onions this year, and wormwood is always close by as is oregano.

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture I will try that. Thank you!

@@alwayswanderingartyou’re welcome!

We use biodiversity to prevent most diseases. Check out our playlist on permaculture to get a better idea of using biodiversity does for the garden, here: ru-vid.com/group/PLDRPDy9wP0_msrth1c2Qs5Udy95YWQs9w&si=AM0TVn6E5BAJ7SSX

I can't remember what zone you said you were in. Was it 7? I'm not sure I can grow soft neck here. I don't mind the wet weather. I'd rather that than no rain. We probably lost some garlic to the huge weed growth, but the stuff that stayed in the ground from having no more stem will likely start popping up in a few weeks again, and so I can decide if I want to pick it and eat it, or let it stay there until next year. That's a great idea to plant your garlic with your strawberries. It will never get shaded out and it's probably good for the strawberries. The mesh trays are from Dollarama. They work really well, and I can stack them by piling them up perpendicular to each other, if I need to save space.

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture yeah, 7a but we still get temps as low as 0F (-18C) although usually a few nights. mostly cold temps are in the 20F (-7C) on the cold nights. i just tried the soft-necks last year just to see what would happen. i actually prefer the hard-neck because i love the scapes which I cook with and eat raw. great in stir-fry. main reason i do not cook with my garlic 🙂i would love your creek but for garlic, it does not like water especially in the last few weeks before harvest. if you often get rain around harvest time, you might try growing them under a clear awning. your garlic will have more intense flavor and store better.

@@AlsanPine Thank you for this. I didn't know that garlic doesn't like getting rained on in its last weeks. I think I might just create a moveable hoop house with saplings and the shell of an old plastic greenhouse for this purpose. The creek is about 20 meters from the garden, so no problem there. I would say the garlic is currently in a wetter part of the garden, but not the wettest. I likely will move it next year. Youre description of your temps seems to describe what we have gotten in the last two winters. In fact, this past winter, we only got about a week of -10C (14F), the rest was more like -7C (20F).

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture yes, garlic needs to be at your driest location and making a clear cover for it is a good idea to keep the rain limited. it also needs a lot of nitrogen as it is growing in the early spring like shallots and onions. the soft-neck that survived our last winter was Inchelium Red from Hood River Garlic. i hope you can find it closer to you 🙂

@@AlsanPineI’ll look for that. Thank you!

Do you put meat scraps in your compost? And if so, do you keep it close to your garden? This is what could be attracting the rats, unless the problem is in the wider area around where you live?

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture no but the whole neighbourhood is having issues. my crow friends at least think they (the rats)are tasty. a few years back i actually had the crows so well trained to stay out of my peas they would chase the smaller birds away from them to.

@@grenwood6551wow! How did you train them?

I've grown my own for years, so just keep my best garlic for replanting. Years ago, I just started with some organic grocery store garlic, and a bit of garlic given me by neighbours.

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture ok appreciate you telling me

@@rahneclark1902 You're welcome. 😊

Here's the garlic planting video from last fall that gave this harvest. You've got all the details. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Gd7MnvUyNzc.htmlsi=rnF4LLdA3myAgtEb

It depends on the health and fertility of your soil. My hard neck are 15 cm/6" apart and I get 7.5 cm/3" diameter bulbs, but I have really great soil.

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture thank you for the video Link and your response is appreciated

@@rahneclark1902 You're welcome!

@@angelad.8944 I haven't measured my garlic, however I just checked out my video from last fall. I planted the garlic 11cm (4.3 inches) apart. Probably a bit close together. I think I'll do the 15cm this fall.

Leek moth. BT applications will work over time. I think you should move your patch for several years. Get fresh cloves from a reliable source. Use a fabric barrier to prevent the moths from laying eggs. It has been really bad the last few years. I never use to get them but had them this year and from my own stock. My advice is what I will be doing myself. It's a pain but it should work well.☺

@@angelad.8944 Bt will kill the caterpillars of beneficial insects that are active at the same time as well, however. We use biodiversity to prevent most pests and diseases. Check out our playlist on permaculture to get a better idea of using biodiversity does for the garden, here: ru-vid.com/group/PLDRPDy9wP0_msrth1c2Qs5Udy95YWQs9w&si=AM0TVn6E5BAJ7SSX

We use biodiversity to prevent most pests and diseases. Check out our playlist on permaculture to get a better idea of using biodiversity does for the garden, here: ru-vid.com/group/PLDRPDy9wP0_msrth1c2Qs5Udy95YWQs9w&si=AM0TVn6E5BAJ7SSX

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture Sorry, I should have specified that I will be doing all the other stuff and not the BT. 😅 I have actually never used it myself on our property. Back in the day, when I worked in the city for clients, I would refuse to use the pesticides they wanted so it was a compromise at the time. I ended up switching they type of clients very quickly so I could implement healthier practices. ☺

@@WillowsGreenPermaculture I have plenty of biodiversity…every pest and mammal around wants a piece of the garden 🫠 Have you dealt with these insects before and successfully seen them eradicated over time?