Growing And Storing Winter Garlic

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

Healthy garlic is pleasing to the eye

Garlic is one of the irreplaceable crops. It is grown in any garden, which is not surprising, since this plant is one of the completely unique spices.

Without garlic, many dishes will seem bland and tasteless, and you will not be able to make numerous preparations at all. And the medicinal properties mean a lot, especially in a harsh climate, for example, such as we have in the Urals.

As you know, garlic is winter and spring. In the Urals, many gardeners prefer spring garlic. Why? Apparently, they are guided by the fact that this type of garlic is much better stored. I will not argue, this is true.

However, winter garlic has a couple of its own, and very significant advantages. Firstly, it is much more productive (and you need to care for it no more than for spring garlic), and secondly, many varieties of winter garlic are shot, that is, they form bulbs, which are an excellent and very cheap planting material. Therefore, at the end, we get a significant gain in yield, multiplied by the opportunity to save on planting material.

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There is also one more important factor: peeling small spring garlic, frankly speaking, the pleasure is below average.

According to its preferences, winter garlic is no different from spring garlic - it is photophilous and hygrophilous, prefers light fertile soils and calmly tolerates frosts and many other natural disasters. However, winter garlic has its own characteristics of agricultural technology: it is planted not in spring, but in autumn and requires (perhaps not in all regions) shelter for the winter. And as a planting material for this garlic, not only chives, but also bulbs can be used.

Features of the reproduction of winter garlic

There are two options for the reproduction of winter garlic: planting with cloves and planting with air bulbs formed in inflorescences (bulbs). And in fact, and in another case, there are pros and cons.

Planting teeth

Planting with cloves allows you to get a harvest of garlic in one year. If you plant the bulbs, then the harvest of full-fledged heads can be harvested, alas, only after two years. However, planting with cloves is economically unprofitable due to the irrational use of planting material, because winter garlic often has very large cloves - as a result, a significant part of the harvested crop goes to planting. In addition, when planting chives infected with diseases (primarily bacteriosis), many plants fall out in winter.

In spring, the seedlings are sparse, the leaves on the remaining plants begin to turn yellow early (this automatically leads to a significant decrease in yield), and a significant part of the harvested crop deteriorates during storage. In addition, this practice leads to the spread of infection. When planting with bulbs, diseases are not transmitted, which means that this is an easy way to get absolutely healthy planting material.

It will also not be superfluous to note that up to hundreds of bulbs in each inflorescence are formed (in fact, the number varies greatly depending on the variety), which allows you to plant large areas with garlic practically without the cost of planting material.

It is worth noting that when planting with teeth, they need to be taken only from healthy and large heads, since a tooth taken from a large head is potentially ready to form the same large head. In this case, preference should be given only to the outer teeth, because the inner teeth form a smaller yield.

The teeth are planted at the same depth of 6-7 cm in rows according to the 15x15 cm pattern. It is recommended to plant garlic about 35-40 days before the onset of a stable cold snap (usually from mid-September to early October, although the timing in each region is different) so that they rooted, but did not sprout.

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Signs of bacteriosis in garlic

Bacteriosis reaches its mass development during storage, although the infection of the heads occurs during the growing season. When harvesting, the presence of a disease on the heads of garlic may not be visually recognized, since the cloves themselves are not visible under the covering scales. Although some of the affected heads can still be identified upon close examination by the slightly yellowish shade of the covering scales from the bottom side.

Affected garlic has deep brown sores or streaks on the cloves. The tissue of the affected tooth acquires a pearlescent yellow color, the lobule becomes slightly transparent, as if frozen. Garlic gives off a very unpleasant putrid smell. Poorly dried garlic, which has mechanical damage, is most strongly affected. Storage of heads in warm and humid conditions enhances the development of the disease.

Future air bulbs tied on arrows

Bulb planting

As for the planting of the bulbs, it is theoretically possible to plant all normally formed and ripened small onions. To obtain them, arrows are left on several garlic plants grown from the largest and most powerful cloves (for reliability, it is better to tie up the left arrows with bright ribbons so that you do not accidentally break them off). The arrows at the beginning of their formation are coiled into a spiral, then as they grow, they straighten.

As soon as the arrows finally straighten, and the teeth are formed and begin to recede, the plants are removed, tied in small bunches and hung in the attic for 3-4 weeks. During this period, there is an outflow of plastic substances from the leaves and stems to the head and air bulbs, which gain weight. After the stem has dried, the bulbs are separated, being careful not to damage their cases.

You can plant bulbs both in autumn and early spring, however, both options are not perfect. During autumn sowing, some of the bulbs may freeze out, and some of them stick out to the surface, as a result, in the spring it is necessary to deepen the planting material again.

For spring planting, in case of non-observance of optimal storage conditions (and they are the same as for onion sets - "cold" and "warm" storage), it is not always possible to keep all the bulbs intact until spring, many of them can dry out.

With a "warm" storage method, the bulbs left before spring must be moved to a room with a temperature of 4 … 5 ° C a month and a half before planting. If this is not done, then the plants in early August will not stop growing - they will remain green and grow until late autumn, and sometimes even shoot. As a result, medium-sized, immature heads with small teeth will be obtained, which are not of interest either as planting material or for consumption. Plants from the bulbs cooled before planting stop growing in early August and form heads from one large round clove up to 3 cm in diameter (the so-called one-toothed cloves). From all of the above, in my opinion, it follows that autumn planting is preferable (I myself plant the bulbs only in the fall).

Before planting, the bulbs are soaked for a day, changing the water 3-4 times, the floating (that is, unripe) bulbs are removed. The bulbs are planted to a depth of 2-3 cm every 3-5 cm in a row and with a distance of 15-20 cm between rows.

Planting garlic must be mulched with a layer of humus, which allows you to protect them from freezing in winter. In regions where frosts often begin with insignificant snow cover, you can additionally cover the plantings with hay or straw. It is especially important to mulch the planting of bulbs - here the layer of mulching material can reach 5 cm, while planting cloves is enough to mulch with a layer of humus of 2 cm.

In my garden, planting ordinary garlic, I mulch with humus taken from greenhouses, and first mulch the beds with bulbs with a layer of humus, then cover with a thin covering material, and on top I additionally lay a thin layer of spruce branches. Without taking such measures, the bulbs freeze out almost completely in winter.

Care during the growing season

Garlic is very light-loving and picky about soil fertility, so it is better not to try to plant it in shaded areas and on insufficiently fertile lands.

Garlic also makes increased demands on the level of moisture, especially during the germination of cloves and bulbs and at the beginning of the growth of the root system (with a lack of moisture, the heads form small), however, this plant also does not tolerate close standing of groundwater. Garlic should not be planted in a crop rotation after garlic or any other onion crops, as this contributes to a more severe damage to it by diseases (in particular, bacteriosis) and pests.

The agrotechnics of garlic when planting it with chives and bulbs is practically the same: loosening, weeding, watering as needed and feeding in the first half of the growing season. In the spring, immediately after the snow melts, the plantings of garlic should be fertilized with nitrogen fertilizers (sprinkled with urea), and then loosened and mulched (for example, with needles or leaf litter).

Mulching will significantly reduce the labor costs for loosening, which would otherwise have to be done after each watering. With active regrowth of greenery, it is additionally necessary to feed the plants with a solution of slurry and sprinkle with complex fertilizer (for example, Kemira), and at the very beginning of the formation of the head, apply phosphorus-potassium fertilizing. It is required to water the garlic regularly, and watering is stopped 20-30 days before harvesting.

The arrows that appear on winter garlic break out in a timely manner, and this should be done below the place of formation of future air bulbs (such an operation allows you to increase the yield of garlic). Broken young arrows can be added to a wide variety of dishes, for example, to all kinds of salads and omelets, to which they give a unique piquant taste. At the beginning of summer (when there are no heads of garlic yet), it is also advantageous to use cucumbers for pickling (both lightly salted and pickled) - it turns out no worse than when using normal garlic.

Especially worth mentioning is such a fairly common problem as yellowing of the tips of the leaves in garlic. There are many reasons for the yellowing of the leaves - it can be caused by insufficient watering, a lack of nitrogen or potassium fertilizers, as well as damage by diseases or pests (especially onion fly). Therefore, there is no single way to deal with this problem. However, as measures to prevent yellowing, you need to pay attention to the regularity and sufficiency of watering, it is advisable to withstand the garlic at the beginning of its development under the covering material (this will save you from onion flies), as well as to timely carry out nitrogen and potassium dressings.

The harvested garlic is dried for 7-10 days

Harvesting and storage

The winter garlic grown from the cloves is harvested with a strong yellowing of the leaves (from about mid-July to the beginning of August) - you cannot be late with harvesting, since when fully ripe, the heads crumble into cloves, and the garlic is then stored much worse.

The harvested garlic is dried directly on the ridges (in dry weather) or in the wind under a well-ventilated canopy for 7-10 days. Then the stems and roots of the plants are cut off, leaving hemp 3-5 cm long, and they continue to dry the heads for about a month in a warm, dry and well-ventilated room.

As for garlic grown from bulbs (one-toothed), it is also removed when the leaves turn yellow, but this usually happens after the garlic is harvested from the cloves - around mid-August. It is impossible to be late with harvesting here either, since then it will be quite difficult to find one-toothed in the ground (you have to carefully stir the soil with your hand and choose one-tooth). Garlic is dried for 2-3 days in the sun, and then tied in bunches (if possible) or simply laid out on burlap, dried in the attic and cut off. In autumn, one-toothed cloves are planted - the next year they make excellent large heads of garlic.

It is advisable to store the garlic in trellis boxes, laying it in a small (no more than 20 cm) layer; you can also weave the garlic in braids of 30-40 pieces and store them hanging.

You can do it even easier: distribute the garlic in small cloth bags (approximately the same as in which it is customary to keep dried medicinal plants) and put the bags in the cabinet on the shelves. I chose this option for myself, however, we have a special room with appropriate conditions for storing crops.

As for the storage temperature, there is only one option for winter garlic: "cold storage" at a temperature of 2 … 3 ° C and a humidity of 70-80%. In the case of “warm” storage (that is, at a temperature of 15 … 20 ° C), winter garlic (as opposed to spring garlic) is poorly stored. It is possible to increase the keeping quality of the heads with a "warm" storage method by covering them with a layer of table salt. For example, you can take a regular parcel box, drill holes in its walls, add a layer of salt, lay a row of heads and fill them with salt on top, then place a row of heads again, etc.

Strong fluctuations in temperature have a bad effect on the safety of the heads of garlic (they dry out and are affected by diseases), so they need to be periodically examined, removing damaged ones in a timely manner.

Svetlana Shlyakhtina, Yekaterinburg

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