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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] planting garlic
  • Date: Sun, 14 Sep 2008 12:45:37 -0400


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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