Market Farming

[Shawnee Flowerfarmer <farmingflowers AT hotmail.com>]

I plant the sets by Halloween or the first week of November, mulch heavily with straw which is mainly
for spring weed  and moisture control.
I have also grown garlic without mulch-planted the same way/time,  an acre plot prepared by stale bed cultivation, but the weeds
are still awful to deal with in an allium patch. I do mostly plant the hardneck varieties.  No
problems with winter hardiness-German Extra Hardy red- mulched or not.   Some seasons the foliage
barely tops the mulch in the fall; sometimes not.  In spring, I topdress with a pelleted
chicken manure and leave it alone-except for adding more mulch/irrigation if needed-until harvest.
My best profit crop with three harvests: every other plant pulled
for garlic scallions in spring, then the scapes, then the heads.
Shawnee, zone 5, Northern Illinois, still cutting baby kale

> From: rrobinson AT nasw.org
> To: market-farming AT lists.ibiblio.org
> Date: Mon, 17 Nov 2008 20:40:08 -0500
> Subject: [Market-farming] mulching garlic
>
> My garlic is all mulched with bagged leaves, but I wonder how others do this, especially those of you who grow a hundred feet or more of row. And do large-scale commercial garlic farmers mulch, or do they grow where the ground never freezes?
>
> Richard, curious in the zone 5/6 rural suburbs of Boston
>
> --
> Richard Robinson
> http://www.nasw.org/users/rrobinson/
>
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