[Market-farming] planting garlic

Road's End Farm organic87 at frontiernet.net
Sun Sep 14 12:45:37 EDT 2008


On Sep 14, 2008, at 11:41 AM, Richard Robinson wrote:

> Any recommendations for tools and techniques for planting large 
> quantities of garlic? I hope to graduate from planting 50 cloves to 
> more like 500, and wonder if there's a better way than hands and knees 
> with a trowel. This will be a combination of softneck and stiffneck.

I put in about 2800 cloves last year. I cut trenches with the 
rototiller, set cloves in trench by hand, pull soil from sides of 
trench in by hand to cover. This goes a lot faster than punching a hole 
for each clove with a trowel or similar tool; but it does indeed 
involve considerable hands and knees work. If anyone has better 
suggestions (preferably not involving expensive equipment I haven't 
got), I'd be interested to hear them. (I've tried raking or 
re-rototilling to cover the trench, instead of pulling soil back in 
with hands and forearms while down there planting, but it actually 
seems to be less work to just do it while I'm kneeling down there; as 
well as easier to do properly.)

The trouble is partly that you really do have to get the cloves in 
right side up. I experimentally planted a few upside down on purpose 
one year. At harvest, the bulbs were readily identifiable, not only by 
my field map, but by the visible U-turn made by the stalk on its way 
out of the ground. All the bulbs were undersized; the energy that went 
into that U-turn must have reduced the available energy for sizing up 
the bulb (not to mention that the softnecks were unbraidable).


On Sep 14, 2008, at 12:21 PM, Marie Kamphefner wrote:
>

>  Do you buy seed or use save some of what you grow to plant?
>  
> Marie in Missouri

I save from my own; for three reasons: 1) I can do my own selection, 
and make sure I'm choosing the best bulbs for the purpose 2) it's a lot 
cheaper and 3) although it makes no logical sense for a vegetatively 
produced crop, the stuff nevertheless seems to adapt over several years 
to do better in a particular location (or to do gradually worse every 
year, for a variety not well suited to that location; drop that kind 
and try some others. I'd give it about three years, though, in case it 
just had one bad year for some reason.)

Unlike the situation with potatoes in this area, I haven't had any 
gradual decrease of vigor from doing that with garlic; rather the 
reverse.

If you have disease problems with your garlic, however, I'd use caution 
in this. In that case, you might need to get clean seed from somewhere 
else.
>  
>
-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale
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