I cleared the mulch I buried my garlic in on top of the soil. I found two toes frozen solid but looking okay. Under the 2" of mulch the soil is solid ice. The temp inside that bed is 53 in the sun so hopefully with the top layer gone the soil will start thawing and warming.

Holy cow, Mary. I would have no clue as to how to grow with those conditions. I am going to quit bitching about having temperatures in the 20's and occasionally in the teens. At least we GENERALLY warm up above freezing even with much below freezing AM's.

I went and checked again. I know I planted those toes below the soil and yet there are four pushed up on top so only the mulch covered them. So they had to have been jacked out of the soil. But the couple I looked at had roots about 1/8 long - several of them. I covered those that were exposed and am feeling more confident now.

I plant all my garlic, regardless of the clove size, 3-4" below the soil line.

drdawg said:I plant all my garlic, regardless of the clove size, 3-4" below the soil line.

Same here.

Mary, I've never had mine get pushed up out of the ground over the course of the winter -- could something have dug them up?

That is quite the mystery.

Nope. No way anything could have gotten to them. I think I planted them too shallow, maybe 2" at most. It was late in the year and I was in a hurry. As the soil thaws I will just poke a hole and put them further down as they appear. Or maybe just add soil over the top. I have about 2-4" of 'freeboard' in that bed. If it holds with 50+ during the day then the soil will defrost quickly. The bed further north on to the south is thawed down about 3" on the south end.

I pulled back some of my straw mulch this week, and there was not much to be seen in my garlic beds (my strawberries are looking happy, though). We are getting a few random warm days, but nights are still cool....30 predicted for tomorrow night. If our nights would stay above freezing, that would help get things growing again.

Yep, we still have a ways to go before anything really starts popping up; I'm more impatient than usual because our snow is gone earlier than normal, makes me thing everything should start growing.

I'm with you Sandy. Snow is all gone early, sun is out. Things should be growing -- rapidly!! But they aren't. I don't understand other than the ground is still frozen.

I'm in new territory with my garlic growing efforts. Two years ago I planted a lot of garlic, didn't mulch it and most of it froze over the winter. I was unable to do much gardening last year due to needing a hip replacement. I hobbled around, tried to garden on my hands and knees, and finally had the surgery in September. Now I am trying to salvage the garlic that somehow survived 2 winters with little of no snow cover and temperatures down to -10 for a week at a time. Whatever survived is certainly acclimated! Now it is coming up in clumps which I am digging up, separating and replanting. I know it won't produce much this year, but I will replant the largest ones this fall. Meanwhile, I have plenty of nice green garlic tops to add to stir fry and other things.

MaryE (geez, we have way too many "Mary's" here!) --

Garlic is really very hardy -- since you weren't able to harvest it, it's "coming up in clumps" because the cloves have divided. Your plan of separating and replanting (and using some of the tops for green garlic) sounds right on! Happy gardening!!

@drdawg , Ken -- what do you do in terms of fertilizing your garlic? And what would you think of the idea of interplanting leaf lettuce with garlic?

The small amount of garlic that I planted inside my hoop house is coming up so nicely (while that in the outer garden is lagging way behind) that I'm contemplating planting all my garlic in the HH this fall -- depending, of course, on how it actually does compared to the outside stuff. But if I do that, I'd like to interplant it with a few leafy greens, lettuce, corn salad, and the like; those plants should be harvested and gone long before the garlic is ready to pull, and would be pretty much utilizing a different root zone, so I think it should work out okay. At any rate, it wouldn't be the entire planting of garlic that I would be interplanting.

Finally took the straw mulch off of my garlic this afternoon, and everything is looking good. Now if only I can keep the chipmunks out of the raised bed....they just love digging in that nice soft potting mix (Grrrrrrr)

Sandy, I see no problem doing that. When I plant in the fall, I throw a handful of Osmacote over each boxed-in segment of garlic. In early April I will use ordinary triple-8, again tossing a handful per area. By April, the Osmacote has pretty much run its coarse and I want to quick-start the garlic for its last 6-8 weeks in the ground. My garlic puts on the most size during that last 6-8 weeks. I compare it to the last month or two of pregnancy, when the baby grows the fastest. At least I think that comparison is appropriate. I don't even bother to work those fertilizers into the garden soil. I just let the rain do it.

Ken, your gardens all look so nice in the pics you post. I so love garlic but hubby can't eat it, so there is no sense planting it. I get my fix at theOlive Garden a few times each year, lol. I am in heaven when I can smell the garlic before it gets to the table.

LOL about the pregnancy comparison, Ken !! I've been using my own compost, plus triple-10 fertilizer, so that sounds about right.

I'm also coming to the conclusion that a big part of my problem with my garlic sprouting early is that I've been keeping it in the garage, where the temps approach (or go below) freezing during the winter; I think those overly cold temps are making it want to start growing once things get warmer again... Took out a bulb of Ajo Rojo that I hadn't planted to add to some mashed potatoes tonight and it was beginning to sprout and quite dried out. So next year it will all get stored in our spare bedroom, which stays around 55-60 degrees in the winter (for the most part, anyway). (Those garlic mashed potatoes were super-good, though!!)

Thank you Karen. They are Spartan and anything but special. I cram in too many plants in a given area! I wish I had a real "garden", more farm-like, but I will just have to do with my approximately 15'x25' raised garden.

I don't know, Sandy. We live in completely different climates. I have never tried to grow garlic indoors or store it anywhere but my kitchen pantry.

Ken, I think "we live in completely different climates" might be the understatement of the year...

But when I talk about growing in the hoop house, it's totally unheated, just a frame with a plastic covering, but it does warm up more in the spring than the outdoor garden does. And my spare bedroom is probably quite comparable to your pantry!!

Everything seems to be an experiment for me lately... even the things that I thought I knew what I was doing

I would guess that my pantry is like the vast majority of houses' rooms. I stored my dormant plumeria in a guest bedroom closet for years, so that closet was probably about the same conditions as your house. Central AC/heat is pretty much universal, I would think. Ideally, garlic should be stored between 50-60 F, and my pantry never gets that low, nor does any other part of the house. But it still seems to work just fine.