Growing Winter Garlic Near St. Petersburg: Preparation Of Ridges, Planting, Care, Cleaning

2024 Author: Sebastian Paterson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:47

Read the first part of the article: Growing winter garlic near St. Petersburg

If you look at the factors that I have identified, then you can immediately understand that they contain all the agricultural technology. For example, I always try to plant garlic on the waning moon in the signs of Aries, Sagittarius. I like to plant more in Aries, although the plant does not look very impressive later, the teeth may not sprout very amicably, but the bulbs obtained later are stored until the next harvest. I also like to plant in Sagittarius. Both Aries and Sagittarius are bad harvest signs, but garlic has never been fruitful - these are not potatoes.

But in Scorpio I try not to plant garlic, in this case the plants grow powerful, they stand green for a long time, and they do not have enough summer for the bulbs to fully ripen on my site, maybe this sign is suitable to the south. To make it clearer the difference in climatic conditions in the same area, I will explain with an example. Once a friend on July 7 brought me a can of ripe garden strawberries from Sinyavino, and on my site that day there were only small green ovaries on the strawberries. In Pavlovsk, for example, raspberries are already red, but in our garden there are not even flowers yet, the plants have just thrown away the buds. Therefore, the landing dates are different.

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Preparing the ridges

I plant winter garlic around September 15, it should be earlier, but by this time there is no free bed, which I usually cook no later than a week before planting. I dig deeply - on a full bayonet of a shovel, lay down the stems of Jerusalem artichoke, goldenrod, helenium, leaves of cauliflower, carrots, i.e. all plant residues that are in the garden at this time. I add a little bit of dolomite flour, superphosphate, azophoska (I underestimate the rate compared to the one indicated on the package). I don't bring in ash in the fall. If you do not have lime or dolomite flour, then add ash immediately.

In the fall, you need to work on the garden bed if diseases or pests have settled on it. Before you start digging, pour boiling water over the entire area of the garden, then with a solution of potassium permanganate and cover with a film.

We are advised to process the seeds before sowing in a 1% solution of potassium permanganate (1 g per 100 g of water). And for some reason, for soil, they recommend 5-7 g per 10 liters of water. Where do these norms come from, who conducted the research? - I do not know. If you make the same solution for the garden as for the seeds, you get 100 g of potassium permanganate per 10 liters of water. This is unthinkable. A weak solution will not work either.

If I had to pickle a garden bed, I would pour boiling water over it, cover it with a film, i.e. would warm up, and after it cools down, sprinkle with copper sulfate - 2 tbsp. spoons for 10 liters of water. I would add 1.5 liters of this solution per 1 m².

Now biopreparations Alirin-B and Gamair-TM are produced and sold, with which not only plants are sprayed, but also watered or sprayed the soil against many diseases.

Planting garlic

I make holes with a peg and lower the teeth, sprinkle them with humus and cover them with earth. This is what I do if the soil is in the garden with good humus content. But in my garden there are also areas where the soil is more scarce. Then I plant the garlic a little differently: when digging, I bring in 1-1.5 buckets of humus per 1 m² or I make grooves with a spatula or a scoop about 12-13 cm deep. I pour humus at the bottom of the groove, mix it with the soil with the same scoop and spread the cloves. Hardly anyone will tell the exact rate of organic matter application, you yourself are looking for the "golden mean" taking into account the characteristics of the soil of your site. For example, if I overdo it with organic, then the garlic will grow very large, but it will be worse stored.

Familiar gardeners told their case. They filled a garden bed for cucumbers in the open field with a temporary shelter very well: in one case, horse manure, in the other, mullein. The harvest of cucumbers turned out to be not very large, as they were planted quite densely, and the summer was not very sunny. As a result, the cucumbers began to get sick very early. It turns out that cucumbers could not master a lot of nutrition. And in the fall, they planted winter garlic in this garden. He grew large, the stems were green, strong. And then in the winter they began to ask me: "Why did our garlic begin to dry out?" So it turns out that it is difficult to find the "golden mean" with organic matter.

When planting, I spread large teeth at a distance of at least 10-15 cm, single-teeth - after 8-11 cm, bulbs - I just sow without spreading them. I leave 20-30 cm between the rows. Why such an alignment? It depends on how the ridge is filled, whether there is a lot of humus in it. Each plant must be given its own nutritional area. For example, if the soil is well filled, you plant large cloves, and the size of the bed does not allow you to make many rows. Then make a row spacing of 30 cm, and leave 10 cm between the cloves. And you can also vice versa: they pressed the planting - 20 cm was left between the rows, but then there should be at least 15 cm between the cloves. After planting, I do not mulch my garlic.

Spring care

Usually in the literature it is recommended to feed winter garlic with nitrogen fertilizers as early as possible in the spring. I believe that this should be done not earlier than the day when the soil warms up to + 6 ° C. Then it is necessary to add one matchbox of ammonium nitrate per 1 m² if the leaves of winter garlic turn yellow. After ten days, feed the plantings with potash fertilizer. And if no mineral fertilizers were applied in the fall, then feed with a complete mineral fertilizer, where there is nitrogen, potassium, and phosphorus.

In my area, I sprinkle the entire area of the garden with garlic with ash, getting the powder even on the leaves. I do it in wet soil, as soon as possible to approach the plantings. And immediately I loosen the aisles. I use ash at this time as a deoxidizer. And when it gets warmer, nitrogen will start working. After all, in the fall I buried waste in the garden bed, brought in humus, azophoska, superphosphate.

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Summer worries

There are many guidelines for summer subcortexes. I hardly do them. The ridge is already filled with everything that garlic needs. I loosen after every rain, be sure to remove the weeds. It rains - no need to water, just loosen the soil in time. And if the summer is dry, then I have so much water in the well that it is barely enough for irrigation in the greenhouse. But I planted winter garlic early in the fall, the soil was warm, the roots had formed, grown up (active root growth occurs at a temperature of + 5 … + 10 ° C). This means that in spring, at the same soil temperature, they will already deeply enter the soil, and they themselves will search for water.

In my youth, I lived in Kemerovo with a hostess in a private house. Her tomatoes turned red in the open field, cucumbers also grew in the open field without any film. I've never seen her water the garlic. In the garden, I helped her in everything and looked closely. The summer is hot there, and the garlic is ripening.

Over the summer, I look through all the plantings several times in order to prevent fusarium, hidden proboscis, thrips, and onion flies. I dig out the lagging, yellowed, twisted plants, wrap them in newspaper (I don’t shake off the soil in the garden) and burn them. In recent years, when she began to use the rejuvenation of garlic with bulbs, there are almost no such cases.

Winter garlic grows next to the onion, so if I water the onion with a solution against the onion fly, I also water it with winter and spring garlic. I use salt or potassium chloride for processing.

I do the first treatment during cherry blossoms - according to local signs, at this time the onion fly begins. I water it for the second time when the rosehip blooms, which means that the years of the onion hoverfly begins. The third time should be watered in late July - early August - the second year of the onion fly is coming. But the third time I usually do not water, since the onions are already large and almost ready for harvesting. The garlic sits deep at this time, its roots are powerful. But I often loosen the soil.

Watering with salt has long been invented by gardeners. It is believed that the norm of salt is 1 glass per bucket of water, and some gardeners pour a glass of salt into a seven-liter watering can. I use potassium chloride more often than salt - 3 tbsp. spoon on top of a bucket of water. I pour the solution into each nest in a thin stream, falling on the leaves, and immediately loosen the soil, close the bare bulb.

Winter garlic harvest

I leave 1-2 arrows in each row to get the bulbs and determine the time for digging the garlic. As soon as the little covers begin to crack on the arrows of the garlic, I urgently dig it up. I dig in with a pitchfork, then gently shake the soil off the roots and carefully stack the garlic in small piles. If a suspicious plant comes across - withered leaves, the bulbs crumbled, the roots are not white, but brown and dry, then I do not study it in the garden, but together with a lump of earth I carry it far to the side and disassemble such a bulb over paper or film. Typically, such a bulb with signs of illness or pest.

Everyone knows the recommendations to dry harvested garlic in the sun for five days. But I have no opportunity to fulfill them, and I do it my own way. If there is no rain, then I spread the garlic on the concrete path, on the porch, on the benches. At night, I must collect it and bring it into the barn. I lay it out on the wood, on the table - in one layer. Every day in the morning and in the evening I sort it out so that the earth crumbles from the roots faster.

After 3-5 days, I raise the harvest of garlic to the attic of the house, lay it out on newspapers in one layer. There is good ventilation and it dries out. When the garlic turns out to be very large, just huge (this is in a sunny summer), then the multilayer shirt fits the stem so much that I have to tear it so that mold does not appear inside. The harvested harvest is marketable garlic, which will be harvested in the fall, and some of it will remain for winter use.

The planting material for me is the bulbous, one-toothed, which have grown over the summer from the bulbs, and the four-toothed, which have grown from the one-toothed over the summer. If the summer is good, sunny, then often from one-toothed bulbs of six cloves are immediately obtained. I have been growing garlic from bulbs for a long time, since it is impossible to comply with all the conditions of crop rotation in a small garden. And if you plant it every year with teeth from old bulbs, then it accumulates diseases, weakens, And then ticks, thrips appear. I just have no time to deal with diseases and pests, it is easier for me to sow the bulbs, that is, to get healthy material.