All about growing winter garlic

Types of garlic

According to the type of cultivation, the crop is divided into winter and spring species. Winter garlic usually yields a richer crop and is consumed from the beginning of summer, before it is fully ripe. After ripening, it can be put into storage, but it is easier to keep the spring crop until the next harvest.

Winter garlic is presented in two main types: arrowhead and non-arrowhead. Non-shooting is better stored if you provide it with proper care, remove it on time, store it at a low positive temperature, then it can also last until spring. But when infected with viral diseases, it weakens, degenerates, and it is impossible to renew it - therefore, non-shooting garlic is less common.

The shooted winter species gives the richest yields, it is more often used for food in summer and autumn. A fully ripened crop harvested on time can be stored for a long time. It does not degenerate, or rather, it is simply renewed with the help of bulbs.

The fact is that the cloves grow in the ground, they can become infected with viruses or diseases of another etymology. A new plant that grows from an infected clove will initially be infected. In a few years it will no longer be possible to get a good plant - degeneration will set in. In addition, garlic gets smaller over time. Therefore, every 2-3 years the planting material must be renewed.

Garlic has no seeds per se. Some people think that the bulbs are the seeds, but this, strictly speaking, is incorrect. The seeds have an ovule inside, after fertilization it develops, a new plant grows from it. Nothing of the kind can be said about the bulb, the bulbs are special organs that are used only during vegetative reproduction. Shooted winter garlic, simultaneously with flowering, forms airy bulbs, they are called bulbs.

For the sake of green feathers, perennial garlic is grown in the garden, which does not form bulbs, but forms seeds with which it is propagated. It resembles a batun onion. Ornamental garlic also multiplies through seeds, but it is not eaten at all, but grown for the sake of appearance and phytoncides, with which it disinfects the air around it. The winter garlic, which we grow for the cloves, has no seeds (in the botanical sense of the word).

When to plant

Before winter, the culture should be planted in open ground a month (or a little more) before the onset of frost. This happens from the end of September to the end of November, depending on the region.

The main care during cultivation occurs in the spring, after the snow melts, since a new plant begins to grow after the soil has warmed up. But the teeth must have time to take root before the onset of cold weather, but do not germinate above the surface of the earth, otherwise the frost will damage them.

The main difficulty lies in the fact that it is necessary to guess when the real frosts will come. Approximately we all know when winter will come, and it is worth looking at this date, paying attention to the lunar calendar, the days recommended by it for planting.

Seed and bed preparation

Winter garlic is planted with chives and one-toothed bulbs. The largest and strongest heads are grown from large cloves with a whole hard bottom. The planting material is disassembled into teeth just before planting, so that the bottom does not have time to dry, it is sorted by size. It is advisable to plant large and small teeth separately, small ones more often. Those who have crumbled bottom or flakes are rejected - most likely, they are affected by a nematode, which means that good plants will not work out of them, and even more so.

In order to improve the health of the seed and not spend the entire harvest on planting, one-toothed beetles are planted before winter, which have grown from bulbs. During the season, not a full-fledged head is grown from air bulbs, but one clove is large, which has all the advantages of its variety. And from these one-tooth, planted in the fall in open ground, in the summer of next year they get excellent bulbs, consisting of many cloves, as befits garlic. So "seeds" give a full harvest in two years.

Before planting, the teeth and one-tooth teeth are certainly disinfected. To do this, they are placed for 25 minutes in a 1% solution of copper sulfate or for 2 hours in a solution of ash alkali. It is prepared as follows: 1 glass of wood ash is poured with 2 liters of water and boiled for at least half an hour.

Immediately after harvesting cucumbers, zucchini, squash, pumpkins or cabbage, the beds are prepared for garlic. They are dug up, potassium sulfate and superphosphate, compost or humus are added, watered if there is no rain, and left to rest for several weeks.

The earth should lie down so that later there will be no movement of the soil when the roots grow. They are not very deep, but they grow vertically downward. If, when the soil moves, they have to bend, rise up, then this will negatively affect the harvest, no amount of care can then be corrected.

It is better to raise the bed by 10 centimeters so that there is no stagnation of melt water in the spring. Garlic generally grows well in tall beds.

Landing

In order for the garlic cloves to overwinter well, they are buried 10 or even 12 cm. The calculation is simple - there should be a distance to the top point of the clove that is three times its length. The distance between large cloves is left at least 10 cm, smaller ones can be left between small ones, since their bulbs will not grow very large. There should be 15 cm between the rows. Some gardeners, preparing grooves for planting, pour sand or ash on the bottom so that the teeth themselves do not touch the ground. They say that this will make it easier for them to take root.

If the "seeds" nevertheless sprouted before frost, they must be covered with a non-woven cloth or mulched with peat, you can mix sawdust with the ground. All this must be removed in the spring. Garlic rarely freezes, but it should not be allowed to get wet or dry under the covering material when the ground thaws.

Basic planting maintenance will begin when the snow melts.

Video "Planting winter garlic"

This video suggests a comfortable 2-board planting method.

Care

Growing crops in the open field does not require special care. It is watered, fed, weeded if necessary, loosened the earth. As soon as the snow melts and it will be possible to come to the garden, the plantings are fed with a solution of chicken manure or mullein, you can add superphosphate and potassium salt. Proper maintenance requires regular watering. If there is no rain, then the garlic is watered every week; you can combine top dressing with watering. If the soil is not very fertile, urea is added in the phase of four leaves, and when the heads begin to form, they are fed with superphosphate. So that the crop can be stored, it is better to stop watering 20 days before the expected harvest.

When caring for the shooting varieties, the shooters are allowed to grow up to 20 cm, after which they are pinched, unless, of course, the owner is interested in growing bulbs.Usually, arrows are left for several plants and the airy "seeds" are allowed to ripen to improve the next year's harvest.

To make the heads of garlic ripe sooner, the earth is shaken off from them and left open by a third.

Cleaning

Harvesting garlic roughly begins in mid-July. The exact timing depends on the variety that is grown, on the care of it, on the size of the bulb, and on the climate. When the leaves turn yellow and lie down, it's time to harvest. Delay will not affect the quality of the heads, but if the ripe bulbs remain in the ground, the scales will dissolve, the teeth will be exposed, and they cannot be stored for a long time in such an open form. All grown garlic cannot ripen at the same time; harvesting can still take several days.

The dug heads are left to dry right in the garden if the weather is dry. You can move them under the roof, but you need fresh air, better with a breeze. This drying moment completes the ripening and maintenance of the garlic. After a week, the crop is harvested indoors and dried to the point that the root lobe can be easily rubbed with your fingers.

It is best to store garlic heads at a temperature not higher than +3 degrees, average humidity, then you can use them not only in summer, but even in winter.

Video "Winter Garlic"

Thanks to this video, you will learn more about the types and varieties of garlic, about the properties of winter varieties, about the peculiarities of planting and growing, and much more.