As someone who has a garden and has successfully grown garlic from cut ends of store bulbs…
It’s not worth the labor.
I garden, yes, but the economy of scales of buying at the grocery store is much lower than growing your own vegetables. You garden because you want to enjoy vegetables that are either heirloom or you want the freshness.
Between the labor, watering, fertilizing, maintaining, etc. it’s simply cheaper to buy at the store.
Were you trying to grow softneck or hardneck? Most grocery store garlic where I live is softneck garlic from china which doesn’t grow well in colder climates. Hardneck garlic, on the other hand, requires a long cold winter in order to flower in the spring. We bought a clove of hardneck from the farmers market, threw two of the biggest cloves in the garden about 6 inches down, and then did absolutely nothing to them for 9 months. The bulb wasn’t as large as the original one but I plan to replant 6 or 7 of the second harvest and see what happens. I usually buy garlic just because of how fucking loooooooooong it takes. I’m tryin to make some pasta not a baby!
This is my perspective. I hate weeding, more than almost anything. I hate crouching and bending over, and shuffling slowly from patch to patch. I hate gardening. I hate getting sweaty and the kind of dirty you get in the garden: gritty, and it finds its way into your shoes and gloves. Gardening sucks.
If I was really invested, I might do hydroponics. Elevated, minimum to no weeds, no crawling around in the dirt. I don’t know whether, in the end, I’d actually save any money, though.
I have a terrible back but love gardening so I invested in 3 foot high bins. They are a life saver for not only my back but keeps rabbits from eating the vegetables. If you get the right soil mixture you don’t have to worry about the weeds.
The dirt…you can’t do much about that except hydroponics like you said but that has its drawbacks too. At the end, you do what helps you and keeps you happy.
My biggest issue at this point is mosquitoes so I’ve started wearing long pants and a light jacket. That seems to have helped things.
I will probably never grow onions, potatoes, corn, celery and other vegetables that are always cheap.
I will plant things that are easy and or pricey. Tomatoes for sure, if I bought the tomatoes at the store I would probably have spent $500 just on tomatoes a season. Chives are also easy to manage and expensive in store. Aspargus is stupid expensive and is almost hard to get rid of once established. Some berry type fruits are also worth growing if you have spare land for them since they come back each year.
Haha, yeah, asparagus is hard to get rid of. It forms these mats of roots like 8 inches down that hollow out during the fall/winter and then new roots shoot back out through the tubes. That said… I’ve never had store bought asparagus that was JUICY. I usually pluck them as as snack to eat while I’m weeding or whatever, they’re perfectly tasty raw.
I have a similar view. Plant things that are fun. It is a hobby and it needs to be that. Why bother planting potatoes when they take up a good amount of space and they’re cheap?
I plant chives as well, rocket because I love it, weird varieties of chillies, and I’m thinking of adding also other herbs that I can’t get easily or that are a faff to get. Coriander is a good example, as I have to get a bag whenever I have to use a tiny bit and the rest goes to waste.
Hobby farming is fun and a great way to get you (and the family) to eat more veggies. Subsistence farming is just painful.
i have so much goddamn basil, lemon balm, rosemary, lavender and laurel because of this philosophy. every few weeks i pick some and fill a jar for each room of the house. it smells fantastic in here.
Yeah that’s my attitude as well. I grow the things that are significantly better straight out of the garden. The best tomatoes are too fragile to go through the sorting machinery, so growing your own enables much higher quality produce. Berries are way better picked ripe. Green beans are also super easy to grow and are better fresh.
Then there’s varieties that just aren’t popular enough for many stores to stock and specialty stores are far and expensive: patty pan squash, molokhia, ground cherries, shallots, celery leaves (I don’t like the stalk), a variety of herbs, peppers that aren’t bell or jalapeno, etc.
I’m going to grow canning pickles next year because find those specific types in the store is a nightmare, and that’s even with someone who works there and can special order them, it’s just easier and cheaper to grow my own!
I’d never grow garlic. Store has huge cheap bins of it.
San marzano tomatoes though? Growing. Strawberries? Absolutely growing, the store ones are okay but fresh is amazing.
Been growing plants inside and out for over 30-years, never had success with garlic. I feel so dumb because it seems the easiest thing in the world to grow. Going to plant this October and see what happens.
My experience with using grocery store bought garlic is mixed. When it did work, it grew a lot of leaves but not the bulb. When I researched this, it’s because garlic requires specific soil conditions to grow its bulbs.
But bulb aside, garlic is a good natural critter repellent. It’s good to grow around lettuce and kale. Though I haven’t found a good cover plant to keep white butterflies away. Right now I’m using netting which they can sometimes find a way into.
As someone who has a garden and has successfully grown garlic from cut ends of store bulbs…
It’s not worth the labor.
I garden, yes, but the economy of scales of buying at the grocery store is much lower than growing your own vegetables. You garden because you want to enjoy vegetables that are either heirloom or you want the freshness.
Between the labor, watering, fertilizing, maintaining, etc. it’s simply cheaper to buy at the store.
Were you trying to grow softneck or hardneck? Most grocery store garlic where I live is softneck garlic from china which doesn’t grow well in colder climates. Hardneck garlic, on the other hand, requires a long cold winter in order to flower in the spring. We bought a clove of hardneck from the farmers market, threw two of the biggest cloves in the garden about 6 inches down, and then did absolutely nothing to them for 9 months. The bulb wasn’t as large as the original one but I plan to replant 6 or 7 of the second harvest and see what happens. I usually buy garlic just because of how fucking loooooooooong it takes. I’m tryin to make some pasta not a baby!
This is my perspective. I hate weeding, more than almost anything. I hate crouching and bending over, and shuffling slowly from patch to patch. I hate gardening. I hate getting sweaty and the kind of dirty you get in the garden: gritty, and it finds its way into your shoes and gloves. Gardening sucks.
If I was really invested, I might do hydroponics. Elevated, minimum to no weeds, no crawling around in the dirt. I don’t know whether, in the end, I’d actually save any money, though.
I have a terrible back but love gardening so I invested in 3 foot high bins. They are a life saver for not only my back but keeps rabbits from eating the vegetables. If you get the right soil mixture you don’t have to worry about the weeds.
The dirt…you can’t do much about that except hydroponics like you said but that has its drawbacks too. At the end, you do what helps you and keeps you happy.
My biggest issue at this point is mosquitoes so I’ve started wearing long pants and a light jacket. That seems to have helped things.
Just don’t plant cheap stuff.
I will probably never grow onions, potatoes, corn, celery and other vegetables that are always cheap.
I will plant things that are easy and or pricey. Tomatoes for sure, if I bought the tomatoes at the store I would probably have spent $500 just on tomatoes a season. Chives are also easy to manage and expensive in store. Aspargus is stupid expensive and is almost hard to get rid of once established. Some berry type fruits are also worth growing if you have spare land for them since they come back each year.
Haha, yeah, asparagus is hard to get rid of. It forms these mats of roots like 8 inches down that hollow out during the fall/winter and then new roots shoot back out through the tubes. That said… I’ve never had store bought asparagus that was JUICY. I usually pluck them as as snack to eat while I’m weeding or whatever, they’re perfectly tasty raw.
I have a similar view. Plant things that are fun. It is a hobby and it needs to be that. Why bother planting potatoes when they take up a good amount of space and they’re cheap?
I plant chives as well, rocket because I love it, weird varieties of chillies, and I’m thinking of adding also other herbs that I can’t get easily or that are a faff to get. Coriander is a good example, as I have to get a bag whenever I have to use a tiny bit and the rest goes to waste.
Hobby farming is fun and a great way to get you (and the family) to eat more veggies. Subsistence farming is just painful.
Look at Mr. Moneybags over here
we plant onions because that way we never have to think “hey, do we have onions?”
I have a similar philosophy with basil. It’s cheap enough in our stores, but it’s way more convenient to always know its outside.
i have so much goddamn basil, lemon balm, rosemary, lavender and laurel because of this philosophy. every few weeks i pick some and fill a jar for each room of the house. it smells fantastic in here.
I like the flowers.
Yeah that’s my attitude as well. I grow the things that are significantly better straight out of the garden. The best tomatoes are too fragile to go through the sorting machinery, so growing your own enables much higher quality produce. Berries are way better picked ripe. Green beans are also super easy to grow and are better fresh.
Then there’s varieties that just aren’t popular enough for many stores to stock and specialty stores are far and expensive: patty pan squash, molokhia, ground cherries, shallots, celery leaves (I don’t like the stalk), a variety of herbs, peppers that aren’t bell or jalapeno, etc.
I’m going to grow canning pickles next year because find those specific types in the store is a nightmare, and that’s even with someone who works there and can special order them, it’s just easier and cheaper to grow my own!
I’d never grow garlic. Store has huge cheap bins of it.
San marzano tomatoes though? Growing. Strawberries? Absolutely growing, the store ones are okay but fresh is amazing.
Been growing plants inside and out for over 30-years, never had success with garlic. I feel so dumb because it seems the easiest thing in the world to grow. Going to plant this October and see what happens.
My experience with using grocery store bought garlic is mixed. When it did work, it grew a lot of leaves but not the bulb. When I researched this, it’s because garlic requires specific soil conditions to grow its bulbs.
But bulb aside, garlic is a good natural critter repellent. It’s good to grow around lettuce and kale. Though I haven’t found a good cover plant to keep white butterflies away. Right now I’m using netting which they can sometimes find a way into.