Garlic is a perennial vegetable herb from the Amaryllis family, which has been popular in cooking and in demand in folk and official medicine for six millennia. Absolutely all parts of garlic are eaten - bulbs, arrows, leaves, peduncles. According to scientists, garlic is a type of onion, as it has almost one hundred percent genetic similarity. The mountainous regions of Central Asia are considered the birthplace of the spicy perennial. Garlic can be planted in early spring or mid-autumn. There are several rules for planting it in the winter way, taking into account which you can get a rich harvest.
When to plant garlic before winter
Since winter garlic begins to be grown in the fall, it is worth starting to prepare the planting site around the middle of summer. On the selected site, after harvesting the previous crops, it is necessary to remove all weeds, the remnants of vegetable plants and carry out a shallow digging. A very important point - you need to plant garlic cloves about 35-45 days before the arrival of real autumn frosts. During this period, vegetable plants will have time to form a root part about 10 cm long, but the above-ground green part will no longer appear. Favorable planting times start in mid-September and end in mid-October. An earlier fall planting will lead to the appearance of green growth, which should not be, and a later one will not leave time for the formation of roots. Winter varieties of garlic require strict adherence to planting dates.
If air garlic bulbs are used as planting material, then it is recommended to plant them in the spring, starting from mid-April.
Planting winter garlic
Accounting for predecessors
The predecessors play an important role in the development of the garlic and its future harvest. After some crops, garlic may not grow at all or will have the lowest quality characteristics. For example, you cannot grow it after onions, garlic, beets, carrots, turnips, celery radish, parsley. But good predecessors are cucumbers, zucchini, pumpkin, cormorants, peppers, berry bushes, grain and legumes.
Preparation of planting material
Planting material for winter varieties of garlic can be in the form of cloves, which yield the harvest the next year, or bulbs, which will give fruit only after 2 years. Seeds must be carefully examined, sorted, damaged and diseased seeds must be removed, small ones are also better not to use. It is recommended to soak the best teeth in an ash infusion before planting and leave for two hours for disinfection. The infusion is prepared from 2 liters of water and 400 g of wood ash. Before use, this mixture must be boiled for 30 minutes and then cooled.
Preventive soaking of the seed can be done in another way. First, the teeth are dipped for 2 minutes in a saline solution consisting of 5 liters of water and 3 tablespoons of salt, and then for 1 minute in a solution of 10 liters of water and 1 teaspoon of copper sulfate.
Site selection and soil preparation
The planting site for light-loving garlic should be open, sunny, with nutritious and non-acidic soil, preferably sandy loam. If the site was fed with manure for the previous crop, then additional fertilization is not required. In the absence of such dressings, 10-15 days before planting the garlic, it is necessary to dig up the entire territory, adding a nutrient mixture when digging. Its composition (per 1 square meter): potassium salt (20 g), humus (5-6 kg), superphosphate (30 g). After that, watering is carried out with a solution of 10 liters of water and 1 teaspoon of copper sulfate, and the entire area is covered with a plastic film.
It is not recommended to use fresh manure as fertilizer.
Scheme and features of landing in different regions
The teeth are planted in specially prepared grooves. Their depth is 15-20 cm, the width between them is about 25 cm. The bottom is covered with a layer of coarse-grained river sand (about 2-3 cm) so that the teeth do not touch the ground and do not rot. The distance between plantings is from 8 to 15 cm, depending on the size of the planting material. After planting, the garlic beds are covered with a layer of dry peat mulch (or a mixture of earth and sawdust in equal parts). In the absence of snow, the landings will need shelter, and after heavy snowfall, it is recommended to remove it. You can use a dense plastic film or roofing material as a covering material.
The bulbs must be sown into grooves 3-4 cm deep with an interval of about 2 cm. The row spacing is 10 cm. After the spring planting, the small air bulbs will turn into one full-fledged clove, which will become the seed for growing a high-quality garlic head. In the fall, these one-toothed beetles are dug up, dried and re-planted.
In the Moscow region, the rules for planting winter garlic are not much different from other regions. The main thing that you need to pay attention to is that the garlic beds are constantly under a thick layer of snow or under a reliable film cover. If winter came with severe frosts, but without snow (or its amount is minimal), then you urgently need to cover the plantings with a thick polyethylene film or roofing felt, because the garlic can freeze in the ground. During constant snowfalls, garlic is completely safe under a thick blanket of snow.
Experienced Ural summer residents and gardeners advise not to cover winter garlic with mulch in autumn, but replace it with polyethylene or roofing material. The mulching layer, in their opinion, is necessary only for young seedlings in spring. Mulch eliminates loosening of the soil, which violates the integrity of the upper roots of plants and makes them weak. Roots cut during loosening deprive garlic crops of adequate nutrition and can contribute to the appearance of diseases. As for the planting material, in order to obtain large bulbs, it is better to plant not cloves, but air bulbs. Bulb-grown garlic is much larger and has a better shelf life.
Western Siberia is characterized by a colder climate and an early arrival of winter and frost. The peculiarity of planting winter garlic in this region lies in the earlier date - from September 15 to October 10. Another mandatory item is to cover the beds immediately after planting the seed.
Outdoor garlic care
Mulching or shelter for the winter
Timely planted winter garlic manages to form its root system by winter and will not suffer from frost and cold winds, being under cover or under a reliable layer of mulch. In the spring, young seedlings must be helped to emerge. To do this, it is imperative to remove the shelter or about 2 centimeters of the mulch layer.
Pruning
In order for the bulb to turn out to be large, it is recommended to regularly cut or break off garlic arrows up to 10 cm high. Usually, these procedures are necessary for plants in the second half of June, when there is massive shooting.
Top dressing
The first feeding is carried out with the appearance of the first green growth. It is recommended to use a solution of chicken manure or mullein as a nitrogen-containing fertilizer, as well as urea.
The second feeding of the garlic plantations is required around the middle of summer. Together with irrigation, an ash solution is introduced, consisting of 10 liters of water and 200 g of wood ash.
Watering
During the period of active growth and development of vegetable crops, they need to be watered abundantly, and when the bulbs begin to form, the volumes of irrigation water and the frequency decrease slightly. During long and prolonged natural moisture (rains), plants can be left un-watered to prevent excess moisture in the soil. "Excess" water promotes damping off of the garlic heads and the development of fungal diseases.
Soil care
In the presence of a mulch layer, all soil care is reduced only to its rare renewal and addition. In the absence of mulch, and especially after heavy rains and after irrigation, the soil in the beds must be loosened and weeded.
Harvesting and storage
Winter garlic ripens about 15-20 days earlier than spring garlic. The yellowed lower leaves on most plants in the second half of July indicate the coming harvest time. Together with the stem, the culture is dug up, left for 4-5 days in the sun to dry, then shaken off the ground, the stem and roots are cut off. Overripe heads of garlic tend to disintegrate, so you should not delay harvesting longer than before the beginning of August.
