A Super Sunny Sunday and a Garlic Update

Today once again dawned sunny and bright. The sky was a beautiful blue and there wasn't even any early morning fog to burn off. It was another day calling me to be outside! Last evening I dug out my book "Growing Great Garlic" by Ron Engeland. Since this year is my first attempt at growing my own garlic I wanted to do some reading and see what, if anything, I was suppose to be doing at this time of the year. Mr. Engeland suggests that when the young garlic shoots reach 3" in height, to apply a foliar spray of liquid kelp of fish fertilizer. I went to Down to Earth today and brought back a bottle of liquid Kelp with a 0-0-8 formulation. I watered down on the young plants, so the foliage did receive a drink but most of the nutrients went into the soil to be absorbed by the roots. I will repeat this every two weeks until I reach a total of 4 applications.

As you can see the young plants are doing very well under the protection of the remay tunnel. This has been such a strange first two months of the year, with so many warm days and below freezing nights. The garlic is doing just fine but I don't know if it is "normal" for my plants to already be 3-4" high the first week of February. Pictured above, plants of Silver Rose".

I also thought it was interesting how different my plants of "Chesnook Red" look as compared to the other two varieties. "Chesnook Red" is growing shorter, with the leaves growing outwards instead of upwards as compared to my "Silver Rose" and "Nootka Rose" garlic. But it should be mentioned that the "Chenook Red" is a hardneck variety and the other two are softnecks. Perhaps that explains the difference in growing habits. Stay tuned!

I hope that wherever you are, you were able to get out and enjoy today's sunny weather. Or at least, you found a patch of sun inside!