[Market-farming] onions/garlic / overwintering crops
Road's End Farm
organic87 at frontiernet.net
Mon Jan 5 18:46:08 EST 2009
On Jan 5, 2009, at 6:18 PM, courtney mcleod wrote:
>
> Yes, I plant my garlic in October but not if you mean “new” as in
> “green/early” or the new garlic I will be selling the next year. I
> have not tried to sell it as green garlic early in the next season. I
> suppose one could leave the garlic in the ground but I don’t know how
> it would be the next season. I do know for sure that onions are nasty
> if left in!!
I wouldn't leave garlic in the ground with the intent of harvesting the
bulbs in the early spring. Fall planting is normal, but the roots start
to grow soon after planting, so I expect the bulbs will fairly quickly
become not eating quality. You don't want to provide conditions
triggering growth for bulbs intended for eating; you want to keep them
dormant.
In fact, if you leave garlic in the ground too long after ideal harvest
time, the bulbs will start opening out, and will no longer be first
quality bulbs; here as soon as the later part of July. I think if you
left them in the ground altogether, not digging them at all, that
they'd be re-growing by August.
You can plant garlic for greens in the fall or in the spring.
Fall-planted greens may be ready sooner. Late spring plantings won't
give good quality. Garlic planted here in early May is good for June
markets, but planting later than that doesn't work well; it's day
length dependent, and will take energy from greens to start bulbing up
in late June even if the tops are tiny.
Parsnips overwinter here without straw, and can be harvested in the
spring as long as you get them before there's much new top growth. I've
had bad luck trying to overwinter carrots in the ground, even with
straw mulch; they turned into mush. Maybe I didn't use enough straw.
-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale
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