[Market-farming] growing garlic

Road's End Farm organic87 at frontiernet.net
Thu Jul 9 14:37:23 EDT 2009


On Jul 9, 2009, at 10:23 AM, cjmaness at juno.com wrote:

> We've tried growing a small amount of garlic twice. And, both times we 
> got little or nothing. I may have waited too long to harvest, or wrong 
> varieties. I've been reading up on the subject and am thinking maybe 
> trying a creole type? From what I've read this might work better for 
> our climate. Anyway, we did a poor job on weed control, didn't mulch. 
> So, I'm guessing any or all of the above are my problem.

When did you plant it? Garlic needs to be planted in the fall -- where 
I am, around mid-October; for harvest the following July. Inexperienced 
growers sometimes spring plant it, which will give only a very small 
crop.

You need a variety suited to your particular climate and soils. If you 
know anyone in the area with similar soils who's growing good garlic, 
try to buy some seed stock from them. If there isn't anyone (and maybe 
even if there is), get a number of different strains from similar 
climates, keep good planting maps so you know which is which, and keep 
growing the ones that do well.

Plant the larger cloves from the larger bulbs, unless the largest bulbs 
are over about 2 1/2" across. Tiny cloves, or cloves from little bulbs, 
are more likely to give you small garlic. You want, ideally, fair sized 
cloves from bulbs about two to two and a half inches across.

Mulch at planting, or before the ground freezes. Garlic will in my 
experience come right up through the mulch in the spring, no need to 
pull the mulch back. It's coming up through several inches of soil, 
after all.

Cultivating between the rows well, plus the mulch, might be all the 
weed control you really need; or it might not.

If conditions are dry, irrigate in spring, but stop irrigating at least 
a couple of weeks before harvest starts. .If the weather irrigates for 
you around harvest time -- it often does here -- this can be a problem, 
of course. Try to harvest from as dry a field as you can reasonably 
manage; but don't let more than about half the leaves die back before 
harvest, or the bulbs may open out, exposing the cloves from within the 
outer bulb wrapper.

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