- Welcome back to the channel my friends.
It is raining
but that will not stop us from planting garlic
in today's episode.
This is a garden with us episode.
So if you have some garlic to plant in your garden
grab it and get to planting.
If you don't, maybe there's some chores you can pop this on
but we're just gonna sit back, relax in the rain,
and discuss planting garlic for this season.
So what do we have in front of us Jacques?
- A whole lot of garlic. - Yes
- We have definitely some more to actually break down
but we have some that we already broke down.
- [Kevin] Yes.
- [Jacques] And this rain is wonderful.
I've never planted in the rain.
- I have not planted in the rain.
I've done a lot of other things in the rain,
(laughing)
but this, it is so pleasant
to just sit in the rain my friends
because we barely ever get this.
That smell, what's it called, petrichor?
Petrichor coming out.
Okay, let's talk garlic.
We've done a lot of garlic episodes here.
Every year we learn a little bit more
with our garlic planting.
Last year we sort of cracked the code
of hard neck garlic in a warm climate
like ours here in San Diego. - [Jacques] Yep.
- [Kevin] It is, it's just kind of a difficult crop to grow.
But we figured it out.
What did we end up doing?
You put it in the fridge for a couple months
and then you go ahead and plant it in November
and you let that season play out.
- Right. So that's the vernalization process.
- Exactly.
- Quick warning, don't vernalize in the freezer.
That doesn't work.
- No. - That'll crack your cloves.
Break it, kill it.
- Yes.
- So fridge.
- Yeah. Fridge, not freezer.
It's just going to literally explode the cell walls
and it will be, it will kill the plant quite frankly.
Step number one, when you are planting out garlic
what you really need to know
is what type of garlic you're going for.
So we have a mixture of soft neck and hard neck garlic.
Why don't you show off this guy here?
- [Jacques] Actually, technically not really garlic, right?
- This one is technically more of a leek.
- So this is our elephant garlic.
It's these giant heads that you probably know about.
- Yeah.
- And it's technically a leek but it does have a hard neck.
So we're gonna pretend like it's a hard neck garlic.
- [Kevin] Yeah.
In effect you'd grow it
exactly as you would grow garlic.
It's honestly way rainier
than I thought it would be right now.
(laughing)
- It's actually coming down pretty hard.
- We're gonna keep on going guys.
Why don't I get a hat?
Why don't I swap my hat out real quick?
(whistling noise)
Ian, give that hat.
- It's a little bit of ice in that rain I think.
- There we go.
- Hit me on the side there.
- Alrighty.
- Kinda refreshing.
- We're back on.
Okay, so the first thing you need to know
are you gonna grow soft or a hard neck?
Now if you're in a cold climate, go ahead and grow both.
It'll work perfectly fine.
If you're in a warm climate like ours
you may want to trend towards the soft neck garlic.
- Yeah.
- So what are you gonna do Jacques?
- [Jacques] We're gonna get the cloves out and start.
I like to remove the outer papers first.
- [Kevin] Yeah.
- [Jacques] Because it reduces the chance
of breaking it as you're peeling.
- Unfortunately in the rain it's gonna be.
- I was just going to say.
- Hard to remove the papers.
But
- We'll do it for you guys.
- I've got actually one of the more classic soft necks here.
This is inchelium red.
- It's actually one of my favorites.
- [Kevin] It is an amazing garlic
and this is an extremely big clove, I have to say.
(pouring rain)
I swear to you guys.
It was not raining not but five minutes ago
and this forecast was sunny so.
- The chance of rain in San Diego this time of year is
- Near zero. Near zero. - Essentially zero.
- So what you're doing is
you're basically popping from the bulb to the clove.
And as you can see, Jacques has done that
sort of pre done that with a lot of these garlic right here.
And if you are wondering,
hey, I want to know where to get garlic
but I don't have a reliable source.
Well, at least for until we sell out
we have about a hundred or
- A couple hundred pounds.
- Yeah we have a couple more hundred pounds
on the store that you can grab from us.
- It's from Peaceful Valley, great supplier.
- [Kevin] A couple amazing varieties
that I think you'll really enjoy.
So head on over and grab some if you haven't already.
But we're just popping cloves.
- Yeah and when I pop cloves
there's like a few things I'm looking for.
- Yeah - First thing I'm looking for
is little bits of damage.
- Yes.
- So generally it shows up as little spots.
Those tend to not be like that bad.
They could be like a scab kind of thing.
But then if you have like fungus or mold
definitely discard that
because you're putting something in the ground.
If you get that disease in the ground
it's gonna be there for a long time.
- Especially if it's a fungal disease.
Like there's a chance it could create
some sort of network and kind of run through the soil.
- Right. - We really don't want that.
- And. - So.
- And we'll just try to get garlic
but we like garlic. - Yeah
- So we want to make sure. - We like garlic.
And we are gonna be monocropping
basically in the back bed over there pretty soon.
And so yeah, why put something in the ground
that you know is diseased?
It just doesn't make a lot of sense.
Now when you're popping cloves also
you're sort of filtering out cloves
that are not gonna be as productive
and cloves that are gonna be very productive.
So take a look at this inchelium red bulb
that has now been fully popped out.
I have some really beautiful cloves right here
that I think are gonna be very productive
but this one here is a little bit of a weak boy.
It's a little bit of a small boy.
- It's coming down a little hard.
- So, you know.
- Yeah. So we're actually saving all the small ones here
because you can cook with them.
But of course nobody likes peeling
the tiny cloves of garlic to cook with.
The better use case
is to plant them really tight together.
- Yes. - And just get green garlic.
And actually, this was a bulb that we left in the ground
and when I was flattening the ground, I just yanked it.
And that's basically what happens.
- [Kevin] So this is how you get
the most in the garden guys.
You buy a bulb like this, you pop it,
you use the biggest cloves
to actually grow more bulbs for the future.
And then all the small boys,
instead of just discarding them in some fashion,
you can plant them in little planter boxes
on a window sill or in a little raised bed.
And you actually get what's called green garlic.
Like Jacques said, you can use it
much like you would a green onion.
But I have to say, I do prefer it.
- Way better. It's so tasty.
- That smell just hits so different.
- Yeah.
- It's really almost exactly what the name says.
Green garlic.
It has that sort of vegetable taste.
- Yeah. - But that garlic spice
that comes in. - It's like a little sweeter
and you could use the whole thing
so you're not just using (trippy music)
the bottom of the bulb (audio warbles)
you're using, oh.
- Ha! I can't tell if it's any different
'cause I'm in the rain and I'm overjoyed
or just I love that smell.
- It honestly.
(deep inhaling) (trippy psychedelic music)
Ooh! That smell good?
That smell good.
- Let's pop a couple more cloves.
But we've done a decent amount of this work already.
- Yeah. - So what we'll do next
is meet you on over back in the garlic patch
and discuss different planting techniques
that might work for you.
- What happens when it rains in San Diego?
You just keep going.
(mellow music)
- Alrighty we are back here in the bed.
This is the same bed we planted garlic in last year
with a couple different tweaks.
First of all, it's longer
and I have to say the bed looks a lot better.
- Looks really, really clean right now.
- It's really well prepped.
Obviously the rain helped out a lot there.
So what did we learn from last year Jacques
that we were gonna improve on this year for garlic?
- One of the big ones is our labeling.
(laughing together)
So this year we have two labels for each each variety.
Last time everything just kind of fell out
and we didn't really keep track of it.
Still ate everything.
- Yeah. - But at least this year
we'll have better accounting.
- Yeah.
- And then I think, like you said
the bed prep's a little better.
We have good compost this year.
- Yeah.
- It was aerated and broadforked.
So we should be in a good position for the garlic.
- I think so.
And then Jacques has invented this little tool.
He broke the handle off of, (laughing)
what was it, a shovel?
- It was like a digging fork.
- Yeah. And so what he did is, he clear cut that off
with like a chop saw and then you used like a rasp, right?
- Yeah. - And then he burnt this
to help preserve it.
And then in your garden, in Jacques garden,
over on his channel, he just boom, come in and dib.
- [Jacques] Yep.
- [Kevin] And just get a nice, nice depth.
So what did you learn for your year in as far as depth goes?
- So what I like to do
is I actually burn this to 4 inches.
- Yeah. - So the idea is that
once I get to that point, oops.
A little too deep there.
- [Kevin] But that's fine. - Once I get to there
that's about 4 inches.
So that's a pretty good planting depth.
- Yeah.
- So I like to do about 4 to 6 inches deep
and about 6 inches apart.
- Yes. Yes.
That's roughly what I did.
I would say here's a couple rules of thumb
to modulate those to your own climate.
If you're in a colder climate than ours
like, maybe a zone 6 or a 5,
you may want to go a little deeper than that.
Maybe 4 inches and then mulch on top
or maybe just go deeper in general.
Like 6 inches deep and maybe a couple inches of mulch.
Especially if you're planting in the fall.
For us, I tend to go about 4 inches.
Now if you're doing hard neck,
I also think maybe going slightly deeper
might make some sense
'cause you get a little bit more cold temps
and stabilization down there
instead of this hot cold fluctuation.
But what are you gonna go in with?
I've got Transylvanian garlic
and keeping with the time of year.
It's October, so we're gonna be doing some Transylvanian
which I've never grown.
- All right so that's a soft neck.
So I was thinking we should try to keep
the hard necks together.
That's another thing last year
we kind of mixed everything up.
- [Kevin] Yeah.
- [Jacques] And it's a lot easier to collect those scapes
if all those hard necks are in one spot
instead of like, scattered around.
- I totally agree.
Yeah that would be a reason by the way guys
to grow the hard necks,
is you get what are called garlic scapes
which is only a feature on hard neck garlic.
- [Jacques] Yeah, totally.
- [Kevin] And it is honestly
one of the more delicacy esque things
you can grow in a garden.
If you were to go deliver those to a chef
they would pay you a pretty penny for them.
It's basically the flowering stock of the hard neck.
It starts to come out
and it'll do this little curlicue.
So it'll loop over once.
That's how you know it's ready to harvest.
Great for sauteing.
Amazing. Amazing little thing
to be able to grow in the garden.
So, you go in.
- I'll go towards you a little bit.
- Yeah. - And I'll start working
working away from you. - Okay.
- So looks like the ground is wet enough
that the holes are holding.
- This is actually perfect.
This is actually perfect.
- Here do you wanna get those couple?
- Yeah, I'll get these.
So as far as spacing, again, 6 inches is recommended.
You can go tighter, but you'll just generally find
that your bulb performance is not gonna be as strong.
But you know, it's always a trade off guys
of size and space.
So if you're in a smaller space than this
then there's nothing wrong with going a little bit tighter
or planting them in a container or whatever the case may be.
- Yeah. You kind of just need to balance it
with more watering perhaps.
- [Kevin] So I'm gonna do Transylvanian in like,
a block perhaps?
- [Jacques] Oh, okay.
- [Kevin] Instead of going down this way, what do you think?
Like maybe a block like this?
- [Jacques] Oh, I see.
Instead of like, going straight down the line yeah.
- We could do it that way or we could do it.
'Cause we have, if we do it down the line
we only have 5 lines to play with.
- Yeah. - Or we could go like,
5 and 5, Right?
Like, go halfway down.
- Okay. - Why don't we do that?
- All right, sure. - That make sense?
Halfway down and then switch (voice slows down)
and then halfway.
(whooshing sounds)
- I'm gonna just keep dibbing.
- So I'll go down this line here.
(laughing)
- Yeah, that's actually one thing I've learned
is that when you're dibbing
dibbing into dry ground really sucks.
- It's not fun at all.
- Because for two things, two reasons, it's harder.
And then the second thing is that
as soon as you pull that dibber out,
all the soil just caves back in.
- Yeah. - So this is really nice.
I did mine and dry soil and then it was not fun.
- [Kevin] Well this is where the bed prep
really comes into play.
So this was our tomato bed this season
also a couple peppers and alyssum and stuff like that.
But what we did is, contrary to popular advice
we actually did rip some of the roots out.
This is not full no dig.
I would say it's about 80% no dig.
Because, why?
Well, I'm gonna be planting a sensitive root crop
that really doesn't like to be crowded out in here,
aka this garlic.
Why would I leave
a bunch of knotted tomato roots in there?
That's just my opinion.
I do believe that it's the smarter approach.
But hey, I'm not gonna argue with folks
who have grown extremely quality garlic
or other plants without doing that.
- Yeah. I'll say I opted to not remove mine.
- Yeah. - Except I did.
I had peppers and it's true, it was harder to dib.
Especially because those roots,
as soon as you hit 'em you can't really dib.
- I just get worried about planting.
Like I know this whole back row
was very, very deep rooted tomatoes.
And so I sort of am like, look, if I know that
how much damage am I really truly causing?
Like, let's get real.
- Yeah, that's true.
- To the soil, by taking the
just the root ball out.
Not, I'm not removing every single root, you know?
Just the root ball.
- Like, you're not sifting it.
- I'm not, yeah.
I'm not sifting it and just rearranging it completely.
Okay. So where should I stop?
You think I'm about halfway down?
Or I got a little bit more?
- I guess we're about halfway.
The next thing is. - I'll go to here.
- If we go in lines
it'll be really easy to bookend the labels.
- Yes. Yes.
So do you have the Transylvania labels on you?
- All the labels are in a stack somewhere over there.
- So I'm gonna put a mark right there.
Okay. Transylvanian.
Have you grown this?
- I have not. That's a new variety to me.
The only one, I've never grown music either.
One of the hard necks we have.
- Yeah.
- That's what I'm really excited for
'cause it's like a classic, famous hard neck garlic type.
- Very famous, yeah.
- That all the small farms seem to love growing
'cause it's apparently delicious.
So, I'm excited for that.
- There we go. Georgian Fire.
- [Jacques] Nice.
- [Kevin] This is.
- [Jacques] It's hard neck, I think?
- [Kevin] A hard neck, right?
- I believe so.
- Wow! What an incredible looking clove.
Have you really taken a look at these cloves?
- No, I haven't. - I don't know.
They're very sort of, they're very dense.
- [Jacques] Oh really?
- [Kevin] Yeah, they're sort of dense and like,
I don't know, they're very smooth.
- There seems to be a lot of
garlic varieties from Georgia. - Interesting.
Yeah. How interesting?
Russian Red, soft or hard?
- That's a hard neck. Hard neck.
- Okay, we're gonna skip that.
Music is soft, right?
- Inchelium is soft.
- Let's do inchelium then.
It probably doesn't need to be repeated but,
oh it's starting rain again Jacques.
(laughing)
But, you want put
your garlic in the ground pointy side up.
Now, is it the absolute end of the world if you don't? No.
But you're just making the garlic do work
that neither you or it would prefer it had to do.
It's just, that's where the growing tip is gonna come out.
That's where you should plant it.
- I like doing the soak beforehand.
- Yes.
- You're not convinced.
And I can understand why. - I'm not convinced yet.
- I can understand why.
- Yeah. So why don't you explain what the soak is
for folks who have not been introduced.
- Yeah there's basically two soaks
that I've seen people recommend before.
The first is you soak an alcohol and that one I buy more.
The idea behind that is that
you're essentially sanitizing the cloves.
So you're making sure
that you're not transferring
any bacterial or fungal diseases
if the alcohol kills them.
- [Kevin] Yes.
- [Jacques] So that's the first one.
And that's like a short 10 minute soak.
The other one is a fertilizer soak.
This is one that I think you're have more trouble with.
- I'm a little more skeptical on this, yes.
- And the idea behind it is that
you mix up some like, organic fertilizer
and you soak your cloves in that
for a period of time and it gets on the wrappers
and it gives it a little bit of an extra boost at the start.
- [Kevin] Yeah.
Yeah you know, I've seen this recommended a lot.
I don't have anything in particular against it
but I'm sort of in a phase at the scale of this garden
here in my backyard.
(laughing)
I'm kind of looking for easier methods
rather than more complicated methods.
And in my opinion at least, I'm just not sure
if that's gonna offer me enough benefit to justify doing it.
And so I guess we'll just have to see.
I know that last year Jacques,
I had my best year at garlic yet.
- Yeah. - And I did not soak.
- No. - But what I did do
is I did do a very heavy vernalization period.
Which, you know, that's also kind of a hassle.
So, you know everyone has their own trade offs
with how they grow.
- The soaking probably will double or triple
the time you wait.
- Yeah.
- So I totally get it.
- I mean it's all this to say there's clearly more
than a single way to grow every plant that we talk about.
- And sometimes it's easy
to get a little lost in the sauce
of getting complicated, right?
- Yes.
- And you can just literally pop this in the ground
anywhere in your garden.
It'll probably grow just fine.
- And forget about it, yeah.
Yeah. I think that that's definitely something,
something to remember guys is,
we did do this for tens of thousands of years.
So, we don't need to get super complicated about it.
- [Jacques] So actually
you brought up something interesting there
when you said that we've been doing this
for like thousands of years, right?
- Yeah.
- Is that garlic is actually fascinating
because it's technically a transplant.
- Yes.
- We're not actually starting a seed.
We're not like sowing a seed.
We're transplanting a tissue of the plant.
So technically, like if you think about it
every single garlic that we plant
has been curated, collected, some human in the past,
saved that, propagated it.
Now thousands of years later
we're still propagating that garlic.
It's just a fun thing to think about.
- It's actually a very good point.
I mean very, very few growers
are ever going to be growing a garlic from a true seed
'cause garlic is in the allium family,
meaning it is a biennial grower.
- Right. So if you're breeding, you might want to do that.
- If you're breeding, you might do it
or you may just start selecting cloves.
- Yeah, that's true. - For different adaptations.
They said something like, about 3 or 4 seasons
and what you select in your own garden
will start to slowly adapt.
- I have heard that.
- To your own garden.
So if you are a committed garlic grower like we are,
I mean, I have cloves
that are sitting in the kitchen right now
that I may decide to select and plant on as well.
- Yeah maybe we put those in like a container somewhere
and keep that line going.
- Yeah, yeah. Could definitely do that.
Okay. So I'll do music here.
- And the other beauty I'll say here is that
these emitter spacings are at 6 inches.
Which is making this really easy for me.
'Cause I'm just going to an emitter
that's gonna guarantee the garlic gets its water.
And you've seen it before.
I mean garlic roots, they're not really that robust.
- No, they're not. They're not.
But what I will say about them is
you get a weird association to earthworms with allium root.
We've noticed. - That's true.
- Is I think it's something about
maybe the sugars at the root area.
The rhizosphere, it's called.
- Mm.
- It seems like, it may be higher than other plants
because I've noticed way more worms in that area
than I have let's say, on my kale or my tomato roots.
So, just something kind of interesting.
I don't know if there's much weight to that
but an observation in the garden for sure.
- Looks like I hit something hard there.
- The size of your dibber is perfect.
(laughing) It, it really is.
- It's nice because if you use like a really skinny dibber
you can't get those fat cloves in.
- Yeah, yeah.
The inchelium's would not have gone down.
- (laughing) No.
- Let's do that.
Oh, look who came to say hi. Bobby.
(mellow guitar music)
I'm like using her to brush my hands off dirt.
(laughing)
You don't know what I'm doing, you're my napkin.
(laughing) (calm, tranquil music)
(mellow guitar playing)
- [Kevin] We have 250 cloves of garlic in the ground.
Soft neck, hard neck, all sorts of cool varieties.
If you want to know exactly how to take it
from this stage all the way through to a final harvest
check out our 3 part series here on the channel.
Until next time, good luck in the garden
and keep on growing.
(guitar fades out)