Garlic grows well in Las Vegas Valley

It is not difficult to grow but you must have soil that is well-prepared with plenty of compost and fertilized with a phosphorus fertilizer to a depth of 12 inches prior to planting. Some very good varieties to try include Polish White, Tuscan, Morado Gigante, Susanville, Red Janice, Kettle River Giant and Chesnok Red. I have never had a garlic failure with any variety.

Separate the cloves from the bulb and keep them in the house overnight. This gives the small damaged area created when separating them a chance to heal a short time before planting. I like to soak the cloves in fresh, cool water for several hours before planting. This should cut off a day or two in the emergence time.

You can actually harvest three different things from garlic: young garlic for grilling, scapes (flowers and stems) and the garlic cloves themselves. Plant them in a row, in a bed equally spaced or container 3 inches apart (if you want to harvest some early for grilling) or 4-6 inches apart if you want to give them enough room to reach their full potential size and don’t want garlic for grilling. Plant them with the pointy end up and about 4 inches deep, covering them with soil, of course.

I usually sidedress nitrogen once a month during the growing season. Sidedress just means you sprinkle some nitrogen fertilizer 6 inches away from the bulbs and let the irrigation water move it toward the roots. Do not broadcast the fertilizer over the tops of the plants or you could damage them.

Once planted and fertilized, water them deeply and mulch with straw or paper mulch. This helps to keep the soil moist and aids in even emergence. I would water about twice a week until you see emergence, then you can probably water once a week at the most until next spring. Keep the bed free of weeds.

The first thing you can harvest is your garlic for grilling, which is usually done just as the garlic is starting to bulb or swell up underground. I will stick my fingers down into the soil and feel if the bulb is starting to swell in early March. When it does, harvest every other one for grilling.

The next thing to harvest is scapes. Scapes are the flower stalks that emerge from the plant in spring. The flower stalks come from the center of the plant of hardneck garlic. We usually harvest it before the flower opens and the scape has made nearly a complete circle.

The last thing you harvest is the bulb itself. Watch the tops of the garlic plants. When the tops have died down about one-third (two-thirds of the top is still green), lift the garlic plant with a spading fork. Cure the garlic by leaving it in the shade to dry for a few days. Watch my blog for pictures.

Q: We have two peach trees that are 7 years old. This year, the peaches on both trees taste bitter. I don’t recall doing anything differently. One of the trees produced bitter peaches the year after we planted it, but has been fine until this year. Do you have any thoughts on this?

A: You don’t mention if the peach is a miniature or not. There is variation on the quality of fruit produced on fruit trees and much of that surrounds the weather during the growing year.

For instance, this year our early peaches and even our early apricots did not have the same quality in flavor due to our unusually cool spring. And they did not ripen evenly as well.

Many fruits need to have consistently warm or even hot temperatures during development to develop good flavor and lots of sugar. Otherwise they can be bland or worse.

I have also noticed that miniature peaches such as Bonanza produce fruit that is very variable in quality from year to year. It is nothing you did and there really is not much you can do about it.

Have you heard about wines having good years and bad years? Well it is the same with most fruit. I think your fruit, and unfortunately you, had a bad year. When the weather is good during fruit development in future years the quality will be better as well.

Bob Morris is a horticulture expert living in Las Vegas; he is on special assignment in the Balkh Province, Afghanistan, for the University of California, Davis. Visit his blog at xtremehorticulture.blogspot.com.