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  • From: Road's End Farm <organic87 AT frontiernet.net>
  • To: Market Farming <market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org>
  • Subject: Re: [Market-farming] Garlic planters
  • Date: Tue, 5 Jul 2016 08:55:51 -0400


On Jul 5, 2016, at 8:45 AM, Mike Rock wrote:

Does anyone use a mechanical planter that just drops seed cloves into a trench without regard to 'pointy end up'?  Can anyone tell me if orientation of the clove is of concern except for really high end, perfect garlic?  Some say that the bulb will be distorted if planted indiscriminately.  At sorting time can those bulbs be simply put in the 'not quite gourmet' pile and be used for other grades?

I don't use such a planter; but I've occasionally accidentally planted a clove upside down. I can tell at harvest that I've done this, because the bulb is visibly upside down in comparison to the stalk: you can see how the stalk started downwards, then curled around to do a uturn and head up out of the ground. If you're topping all the garlic, rather than braiding it, the weird stalk won't matter; but every bulb I've found like that has been smaller than the ones around it, often quite noticeably so; presumably due to the garlic having to take extra energy just to get out of the ground. So while the individual bulbs can indeed be used for other grades, if the cloves are just being dropped randomly I'd expect a much smaller overall crop.

-- I never saw any answer to my question about bulk garlic prices. Anybody got anything? Again, small scale bulk, 5+ lb at a time to restaurants and/or small scale retail.




-- Rivka; Finger Lakes NY, Zone 6A now I think
Fresh-market organic produce, small scale







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