[Kristen]

I never got around to buying any Garlic Cloves in the Autumn

What do you suggest? Get some left-over Autumn varieties and bung them in anyway? or go with Spring varieties? Or some-and-some perhaps?

[Trillium]

If you can get hold of any late autumn varieties, get them in now. Or plant up individually in largish pots that you can later plant out. If potted, place in cool greenhouse or even outside - they need the cold to stimulate roots and bulb division.

http://www.allotment-garden.org/allotment-tips/garlic-in-pots.php

[New shoot]

Anything left from the autumn will be a bit sad by now.  There should be new garlic coming into garden centres very soon.  I bought some last year from work just labelled Pink Garlic and it was fab.  Got huge big bulbs of really good flavoured garlic.

As Trillium says, garlic needs about 6 weeks of cold to make the bulbs divide or you get 1 massive clove.  Shouldn't be an issue if you plant in January 

[Kristen]

Good point about "Letting them feel the cold".  I'll have a look in the Sheds to see what they have got that has withered away and get some Spring ones ordered as the mainstay

I need to put the "Order Garlic" date in the diary ... being out of step with seeds it catches me out every year.

[Trillium]

Garlic catches a lot of people off guard. Over here, the bulb companies that supply shops, sell them only in spring which is far too late for planting. Not surprising that people feel garlic is a waste of time to grow.

[Babstreefern]

Thats my job this weekend, putting in my garlic - really, really late .  I ordered them from the allotment shop, but a new committee has just taken over and they didn't put the orders in until November , even though I put my seed order in beginning of September.  I won't be buying them from them anymore - will order them online in future.

[Kristen]

"will order them online in future"

I don't know if it is just me, but I've spent most of the day ordering online ... seems to be a fraught process

I had a couple of vegetable seeds I wanted (those I didn't manage to get in the sales last year). And some Sweet Peas. And several Perennials. And a few Exotics.

I was trying to do a bit of a price comparison between the various sites, but of course their Varieties only marginally overlap

The "Search" feature on most is laughable - a near miss on the name often gave me nothing, or things like "Sweet Pea" listed pages of Peas before I got anywhere near any flowers. And varieties I have had from one vendor before are no longer offered by them (Sweet Peas bred by Unwins but offered by pretty much everyone EXCEPT them now? Bizarre ...)

Perhaps I should build a centralised seed-buying website ...

... and to cap it all off Chiltern Seeds upgraded their whole website in the middle of my purchase (well, I think that's what happened, the whole Look and Feel changed) and whoever was doing that job didn't bother to consider what would happen to people filling baskets at the time - so I lost my whole basket - not to mention that a couple of products could not be found for love nor money after the upgrade, and that the checkout threw me out with an error - time will tell if they got the order or not (but PayPal tells me they have taken my money anyway!). IMHO its madness upgrading a website just before a bank holiday weekend when all the technical people will not be checking what is going wrong ....

[strangerachael]

I planted garlic in late November, just before the freeze. Still no sign of shoots - will they still come up I wonder?

[Trillium]

They will. I had that happen last fall - no sign at all until the weather warmed up in spring. I actually thought I'd lost my crop and had just planted extra cloves (sprouted ones) only to find 2 weeks later that all of the first planting had shot up and was thriving. And the new plantings were squashed in between the first. So, patience and lots of it with garlic.

[Gwiz]

I'll be putting mine in tomorrow. It's usually long in by now, but I've been out of action for most of the autumn. I'm sure it'll be fine, I'll give it a hefty mulch of manure, And if it's not, then there's always the spring sown varieties

[wighty]

Mine went in today!  Always start off with good intentions, get sidetracked and then wonder where the time went. The Kelsea onion seeds were also planted today.  Bit of a tradition here.

[paintedlady]

I planted garlic in late November, just before the freeze. Still no sign of shoots - will they still come up I wonder?

oh yes!  My 2010 garlic wasn't planted until late November and I got a bit worried when I saw no sign of them throughout winter ... until mid-March.  They turned out to be the best garlic I've ever harvested