[Market-farming] planting garlic

Road's End Farm organic87 at frontiernet.net
Tue Sep 16 09:05:36 EDT 2008


On Sep 15, 2008, at 9:39 PM, Glen Eco Farm wrote:

> I haven't been mulching my garlic and generally it does fine in our 
> mild
> Virginia winters, leaving open the option of running through in the 
> spring
> with cultivators.  This year I might mulch at least part of it just to 
> see
> if it gives me some advantage.

I always mulch it up here in New York (straw mulch). If I don't, 
repeated freeze and thaw cycles can heave the cloves right out of the 
ground. You can push them back in again and they'll grow, but it 
definitely sets them back. -- This, I expect, does vary a good bit 
depending on where you are. Either reliable snow cover all winter, or 
significantly warmer winters, might well remove the necessity for straw 
(though I think it does have additional benefits through the season).

I cultivate garlic in the spring anyway, with the old Troybilt 
rototiller. Occasionally I have to stop to get packed straw out of the 
tines, especially on the first cultivation; but for the most part I can 
just pause once in a while and lift the tines and most straw will just 
fall out. I spread the straw by hand, though, and lay it so it's mostly 
right on top of the row; there isn't much inbetween the rows. If you 
put it in with some sort of mechanized chopper, I expect it's as thick 
between the rows as in them, which might make it impossible to 
cultivate unless you pulled the straw out first.

-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 5 mostly
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale
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