Has anyone planted garlic now for a mid-to-late-summer harvest?

I have three brand-new Earth Boxes and would love to plant some garlic in them for mid-summer harvest but don't even know whether or not that's plausible. I would use the white side cover (perhaps starting in June) to reduce the heat. I have always planted my garlic in the fall and harvested it towards the middle of May (hardneck) and the end of May (softneck and Creole).

Nope. Only ever planted it in the fall as well.

I don't mind an experiment but I hate thinking of wasting perfectly good garlic or losing the use of my Earth boxes for other vegetables.

So go buy some store garlic and use it as a test! You'll still lose use of the Earth Boxes but at least not your GOOD garlic!

Nope. I don't want to grow what's in our grocery stores and since our garlic primarily comes from China now, I don't know whether it will even grow. I would rather waste the "good" stuff. There is only room for 48 cloves, so that will only be a handful of bulbs. Not a great loss if/when I plant it.

I still hope to hear back from someone who has already done this "experiment".

I've planted garlic in the spring, which I harvested at the same time as my fall-planted garlic; it just made big, round, single cloves for me though (didn't divide into a bulb with multiple cloves). I was going to say that I haven't planted any here as of yet this year, since the ground is still frozen... but I think you've given me an idea, Ken: I have some self-watering rectangular planters about the size of Earth Boxes, and my garlic from last fall is beginning to sprout, so maybe I'll trying growing it in one of those, out in the GH or hoop house until the weather warms up a bit. Or maybe it would be better to just plant it and then put the planter outside and let nature take its course? At this point I'm pretty much up for trying to plant anything -- I "winter sowed" 3 more kitty litter jugs today!

You are asking the wrong person, Sandy. I still don't know what to do. IF I do plant it, this weekend (I think) is the last of our really cold weather (that's 30's for us ), so all my garlic will be outside.

I guess we'll never know unless we try, Ken!

I put the poly on my raised beds including the one that I planted the garlic in last fall. They are at the south end of the bed and even now at7pm it is still 40 in the beds. Haven't closed them up but I think the sun warms the beds. Was hoping to help the garlic along. I so hope it grows.

Patience, Mary Stella -- it WILL grow!!

I am sure you'll have growth and have a good crop, Mary.

I closed up the poly yesterday. Overcast today but still was almost 40 in the hoop house. I put my outdoor thermometer there so I could check on its temp from in the house. Was pretty busy with the garage today so only did a quick run through the 'back 40'. Stuff is growing slowly but since last year at this time I still had a foot of snow I am not complaining. Well, not much anyway.

Keep on growing, Mary. One step at a time still takes you down that path. I hope you have a fabulous crop come harvest time. Your conditions are so much different than mine, and mine are so much different than those in Florida and S. California. That just makes the journey that much more interesting.

I think I am more excited and interested in the garlic than anything else in my garden this year. It is a new thing. I also have a small patch of onions (green I think) out in the garden that came out of the snow green. I am curious to see if they will survive the winter. That would be interesting. If they do, then I will dedicate a patch to them this year.

Keep us posted, Mary. I will go out and take some pictures of all mine (well, some of it in the raised garden) and you can see what garlic tops look like in the south right now.

Thanks Ken. You all will be the first to hear about growth.

Here you go, Mary. This is my garlic, at least the tops of those bulbs, growing in my raised garden and in a handful of large pots. I don't remember how many cloves I planted, but I think it was 200-300.

Is that NOW, Ken? I guess that makes you a good 2 months ahead of me...

Yes, Sandy, those pictures were taken a few minutes ago. I have had green stems since fall, but they have really grow a lot in the last week or so. There are ten varieties and the top-growth are a little different with each of them. They were all planted the same time, around Nov. 1.

This is such a big country!!

(and yet, I love where I live... )