Selfsufficientish.com

Had a really good day in the garden today made a couple of raised beds and planted them full of onions and garlic

When your retired Susie you get more of a chance to organise yourself

Hi

I am newish to gardening - is it the right time to be planting onions and garlic outdoors now - should I be getting on with it?

JuzaMum

Yes JuzaMum,

Now is the perfect time to get onions and garlic in. Your local garden centre should have sets in now :-)

old tree man wrote:When your retired Susie you get more of a chance to organise yourself

is that so??? Mugga! I need a course on how to do 'organise' I still have last years onions (flowering nicely!)

I plant garlic in November. We don't have winter onion sets here and garlic sets are only available in the spring so I just sow supermarket or my own garlic (which was originally supermarket garlic ). The silly thing is when the sets of onions, shallots and garlic are available here in the spring the instructions for the shallots and garlic were to sow them in the autumn..... now how dumb is THAT!!!

Anyway it's kind of a good thing as I have nowhere to plant onions now as the veg patch is full of veg!

We get through loads of onions and garlic, but we've only just moved into our new bungalow so i have a bit of a blank canvas so i'm cheating a little i'm building raised beds all around the garden to make it easy for us both,

Hope it goes (grows) well Russ.

JuzaMum wrote:Hi

I am newish to gardening - is it the right time to be planting onions and garlic outdoors now - should I be getting on with it?

JuzaMum

Plant sets of japanese overwintering onions now,available from decent gard.centres etc. plant garlic cloves available the same places,over the next 4 to 5weeks.Feb. if you miss it.

I need to get my garlic in....I haven't got room for onions in my raised bed (it's in a community garden), I figured garlic costs more than onions. From what I understand, garlic likes a good frost, and that in the UK, Thermidrome (???Is that right???) is a good variety for our frosty, yet infuriatingly wet, climate.

I've always been warned off planting supermarket bulbs (bought for cooking) because they're not suited to our pain-in-the-arse climate (because they're imported from places like China); but I'm quite tempted to give some a go in a spare pot at home..y'know..just to see.....call it an experiment.......has anyone grown any indoors, like pot plants?

I imagine indoors you'd get plenty of leaf which you could use like spring onions but I doubt you would get a head of garlic forming if it needs cold/frosty weather to do this.

The garlic i get are grown for the north so they handle the weather pretty well

I figured garlic costs more than onions.
I'd do a bit of both CT,don't forget the jap onions you're planting now are ready inMay\June when onions are far more dear,and flown in from NZ etc.Cant you find somewhere you can hide 3or 4 buckets outside? Good luck any how,I really rate growers who grow loads in small areas,I've come to realise that the more space I have the more I waste ,It's easy to look at golf courses ,carparks etc. and say what a waste of land,but much of this smallholding could have been better utilized. Best Wishes.

Citizenwiglet, the problem with planting chinese garlic is not climatic but that it is not certified, ie. certified free from disease. However I grew it for years without trouble. For the last couple of years I switched to saving my own from this stock. Last year I thought I'd also try some named varieties - what happens I got Bassal Rot, similar to onion white rot. This means at least a four year rotation although I'll also try lighting a few bonfires on this spot to kill the spores.

So the moral is grow bought garlic in an isolated spot or container and then save your own.

Russ you are a wee bit ahead of me - I am planting mine this weekend. Mind you, you are in tropical Yaaarkshire