[Market-farming] mulching garlic

Richard Stewart rstewart at zoomtown.com
Mon Nov 24 09:30:30 EST 2008


Barbara

I use leaves.  I have plenty of baled hay but it introduces weed seeds  
so I avoid it, plus we still have a wonky hay market right now around  
here and its at premium price still.  I have a lawn care service that  
mows for me in return for permission to dump.  When they dump leaves I  
simply go down and use a brush attachment on my Bobcat and load the  
leaves onto my dump bed.  This year I am only growing about 700 heads  
of garlic.  The stiff neck and early varieties have already broken the  
ground and have shoots up (we planted the first full week in November).

The leaves seem to do well, especially if they are mulched up a bit  
into smaller pieces.  This is my second year using the leaves and I am  
quite happy with them.  The one problem with whole leaves is keeping  
them in place during high winds.

The leaves I use are a mix of Oak, Maple, and Tulip.

Straw this year is running around 5.00 a bale.  Good hay is a bit  
more.  We bale right around 6K bales each year and use them solely for  
our boarding operation.

Hope that helps.

Richard Stewart
Carriage House Farm
North Bend, Ohio

An Ohio Century Farm Est. 1848

(513) 967-1106
http://www.carriagehousefarmllc.com
rstewart at zoomtown.com



On Nov 18, 2008, at 9:58 PM, Barbara Dieckman wrote:

> I actually am interested in your using leaves as they are plentiful  
> for me. I know most of the market farmers that grow garlic here use  
> straw, but it is $$ and the leaves are already here. Do you have  
> good luck with the leaves and how much do you put on?
>
> On Mon, Nov 17, 2008 at 8:40 PM, Richard Robinson  
> <rrobinson at nasw.org> wrote:
> My garlic is all mulched with bagged leaves, but I wonder how others  
> do this, especially those of you who grow a hundred feet or more of  
> row. And do large-scale commercial garlic farmers mulch, or do they  
> grow where the ground never freezes?
>
> Richard, curious in the zone 5/6 rural suburbs of Boston
>
>  --
>  Richard Robinson
>  http://www.nasw.org/users/rrobinson/
>
> _______________________________________________
> Market-farming mailing list
> Market-farming at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/market-farming
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Market-farming mailing list
> Market-farming at lists.ibiblio.org
> http://lists.ibiblio.org/mailman/listinfo/market-farming
>

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.ibiblio.org/pipermail/market-farming/attachments/20081124/395d7eb9/attachment.htm 


More information about the Market-farming mailing list