garlic & onions

[old tree man]

im basking in the garden this afternoon jumping in and out between rain showers

[GrowerNewbie]

I'm thinking about growing some garlic, would be ok in a 'deepish' trough - planter, thingy?

I've got a bit of wasted ground at the bottom of my garden and thought if I built a planter, say 12-18inches deep, say 6-9 inches wide and maybe 3-4 feet long - would that be enough to grow garlic in??

[old tree man]

That souds fine, garlic is pretty sturdy stuff just keep an eye on it it dosent like to dry out and keep it weed free all the best

[Green Aura]

My garlic arrived yesterday and I'm now waiting on the red and white onion sets, which should come in the next day or two.

I've only ever grown garlic in pots or round my roses before. I don't want to use pots this year, as we have our new (old) spiffy beds in place and the roses are currently inaccessible in the rubble we lovingly call the rest of the garden.

So my question is, can I grow them in between the onions or are they better placed somewhere as companion plants?

Our veg gardening is a bit arse about face this year as we're only starting with the autumn planting! For some reason this seems to have completely thrown me and I can't work out what to plant where.

[oldjerry]

I grow all the alliums together,as it pretty important that they fit into the rotation,you dont want diseases in your onions .(did you mean in the same interspersed in the same row? )

[Green Aura]

That's great Jerry - what I thought. I really am being dithery about planting this year

They'll go in rows, between the onions. Next year I'll be able to plant them under the roses again.

[Green Aura]

Well my mother came and helped me plant 5 rows each of red and white onions and garlic - so I'm expecting a healthy crop of radishes next year (long story)

[Millymollymandy]

ah ha ha ha aaa guffaw ha aahah snort hahaha snigger ha ha aah ha sorry I'm in stitches here.

[old tree man]

Ha ha

[grahamhobbs]

Wow, that's a lot of autumn planted onions. How many do you plant in spring? How big is your family?
I do about 50 in autumn and 300 in spring. This should last us for the whole year, although this year with the very dry summer the onions were smaller than usual, so our crop won't stretch much beyond christmas.

[grahamhobbs]

SusieGee, interesting didn't realise the autumn planted onions stored for that long. Need to check that out, because makes a lot of sense to grow more over winter, rather than summer when there is more competition for space.

Regarding onion rot, sorry a little late for bonfire night but try having bonfires on the infected ground, should kill the spores.

Talking about onions, this year I tried some F1 onions, Hercules, waste of time (and money, given extra cost). Alright it was a very dry year, but Hercules was even smaller than usual Sturon.

[Minnesota]

I planted about 150 Garlic in the 2nd week of Oct.
all Hard neck type,
about 45 Armenian Porcelain and just over 100 Chesnok Red.
I cover them with a thick layer of chopped Cornstock mulch...maybe 10" deep

I've tried growing Grocery store Garlic, I call it California Garlic, since that is where most of the softneck garlic is grown in the US, anyway it gets too cold here...about 90% don't survive the winter.

[grahamhobbs]

This year I grew various garlics. I normally grow my own saved garlic, originally shop bought chinese garlic, but this year I also grew Cle d'Or, Germidor, some garlic from Morocco, (all autumn planted) and Thermidrome in spring. Can't say I could see any difference in any of them, except the Moroccan was fractionally smaller, The Chinese and Cle d'Or were ready perhaps 2 weeks ealier than Germidor and the Morrocan, whilst the spring planted Thermidrome was perhaps a month later. Taste wise, sorry I couldn't tell the difference.

This year also trying Solent Wight and Albergesian Wight, the later seems interesting as it has particularly large cloves.

[Millymollymandy]

Well I have some kind of red onion rot, they were fine until I pulled them then they've been gradually rotting ever since. A lot never made it to fully drying out even.

Now I've found a fair few of my shallots rotting - thought they were supposed to last for much longer than onions?

I'd already decided to only grow shallots next year instead of onions as they seem to like the heat and dryness better than onions that need too much watering and take up space. Stopped growing ord onions cos of the space involved and they are cheap to buy anyway, whereas red ones are v. expensive.

but if they are going to go off after only 3 or 4 months it's hardly worth growing any more than I did this year.

We can't get any onion sets for planting in autumn here either, which is a huge shame as the ones I got from England one year (Radar, I think) were the most tasty onions I've ever eaten. There's very little choice of spring sets here (abt 2 or 3 varieties ) and they are nearly always the flat bottomed kind which are really hard to cut, and don't taste of anything much.

[gregorach]

We can't get any onion sets for planting in autumn here either, which is a huge shame as the ones I got from England one year (Radar, I think) were the most tasty onions I've ever eaten. There's very little choice of spring sets here (abt 2 or 3 varieties ) and they are nearly always the flat bottomed kind which are really hard to cut, and don't taste of anything much.

Have you considered growing from seed? A chap I know grows onions from seed in module trays, lifts and dries them when the bulbs reach marble size, and then treats them just like bought sets. Haven't tried it myself, but he seems to know what he's talking about. You get a much better choice of variety and cheaper postage - plus he reckons they do better than bought sets.