Garlic is the botanical brother of onions. By the way, you can eat the leaves and inflorescences of garlic, especially in vegetable salads, they will be appropriate. And this plant is rightfully considered a natural antibiotic. That is why garlic grows in any garden, useful and indispensable in many dishes. True, not every garden manages to harvest a good harvest of garlic, but how to prevent this is worth figuring out.
What influences the choice of predecessors?
The word “crop rotation” should be known to every gardener, but not everyone respects the process, which greatly affects the quality of the crop. Yes, and on crop yields in principle. Garlic has a fibrous root that does not go very deep into the ground – these are its morphological features that are significant for crop rotation. Nutrients relative to the surface layers of the beds, garlic uses to the maximum.
And if next year a new batch of garlic is planted in the same place, it will obviously lack food. And if diseases and pests have not bypassed this season, they can continue the attack in the next.
Why is it so important to choose the right predecessors:
- this will not allow the soil to be depleted;
- pathogens, larvae will not accumulate in a critical amount;
- the natural balance of soil nutrients will be restored;
- weeds will not occupy the garden so significantly.
By the way, crop rotation is also useful because it minimizes the effort to care for the crop. The soil will not need to be “stuffed” with preparations of chemical origin, soil fertility will be supported by natural resources.
It is also important to consider on what land the culture will grow. The best soil for garlic will be loam with low or neutral acidity. The soil needs to be fertilized with compost, its culture is very fond of. Spring garlic is usually planted in spring (at the intersection of April and May), and winter garlic – in autumn, from mid-September to the first decade of October.
What crops can be planted after?
If you want to find the most ideal option, then the best predecessors will be crops. These are plants, as a rule, with long roots that absorb nutrients from the deep layers of the earth. After rye, wheat, silage corn, millet, garlic, including winter garlic, lays down perfectly in the ground. If you dig up a bed after harvesting crops, then by the time the garlic is planted, it will be overgrown.
Chopped greens will work as green manure, and the soil will be additionally filled with organic matter.
Also in the list of optimal precursors for garlic will be forage grasses and herbs. For example, clover and alfalfa are very good. Vitamin plants will also be excellent predecessors, we are talking about dill, cilantro, lettuce, celery and parsley. They will actively saturate the earth with nitrogen, which is useful for garlic.
If the summer cottage cannot boast of size, planting grain will be problematic – there simply won’t be enough space for them to fit the rest. Therefore, it is quite possible to outline such a scheme: where cucumbers grew, as well as zucchini or squash, garlic will take root well next year. After early white cabbage, after cauliflower, it also grows well (unless, if these plants were heavily infected, sick, you should not put garlic on this land next year).
Members of the gourd family are one of the best precursors for garlic, because they do not have common diseases with it. The powerful root systems of pumpkins loosen the soil well and are even able to secrete bacteria that help to better produce nitrogen.
The following green manures are good for winter garlic:
- clover;
- mustard;
- lupine;
- forage grasses.
This is an excellent action so that the soil is stocked with nutrients, its structure has improved, and the number of weeds has decreased.
Before winter, it’s a good idea to organize beds with garlic after strawberries: this crop has a short growing season, which is convenient for such planting and changing crops. The only thing is that strawberries readily absorb a lot of nutrition from the soil, but it should be enough for garlic. True, before planting, the soil will have to be fertilized with a complex mineral composition. By the way, many gardeners assure: after strawberries, the heads grow large, healthy, beautiful.
Well, if you call the most sought-after precursor of garlic, cucumbers will definitely become it. It’s just that there is no need to talk about the prevalence of this culture, so such a change of plants occurs more often.
Bad options
They learn from such options, but it would be better, of course, to know them only in theory. The most unsuccessful predecessor is beets. Because this plant “eats” a lot and the soil will be significantly depleted. Moreover, this applies to both table and fodder beets. With carrots, the problems are actually the same, it wastes a lot of nutrients. Moreover, the pests of the plants are common, which simply puts the final point in the debate whether garlic, beets and carrots are suitable for crop rotation.
After that, planting garlic is harmful.
- Potatoes, tomatoes, eggplants are plants that “like” to leave behind infected areas, for example, Fusarium. And such a legacy for garlic is not at all necessary.
- Onion, although it acts in eternal partnership with garlic, is considered a dubious predecessor. They suffer from the same diseases, and the same pests attack them. In addition, onions are considered “gluttonous” precisely in relation to potassium, and this also depletes the soil.
- Radish and radish also leave no options for garlic, forcing it to grow in depleted soil, which will simply put an end to a good harvest.
- Oats and barley, although they are cereals, are also not the best predecessors. Seed corn and sunflower will also not work.
The main principle of the selection of predecessor plants is that they should not have a superficial root system (the same as that of garlic). Everything is simple here: garlic will not be able to receive nutrition deep in the ground, its roots will not reach it. And in the upper layers, everything is already “chosen” by the previous culture. So garlic does not grow as it could. And even high-quality top dressing will not be a full-fledged help.
Incidentally, after the garlic itself, strawberries grow well on the ground, sometimes the yield results are simply impressive. And other berries show the same success in growth. And it will also protect plantings from harmful insects for 2-3 seasons.
This is all thanks to the phytoncides that the plant secretes: garlic heads produce them directly into the ground, and this is the best natural pest prevention.
After garlic for the next season, you can plant legumes, tomatoes and cucumbers, pumpkin and its “relatives”. If you want to give the soil a kind of rest, you can sow it with green manure – white mustard or cereals. But onions are not planted further (as well as vice versa), and this will be true for at least 4 seasons ahead.
It is worth mentioning the neighbors. For potatoes, he is a very useful neighbor, because he is considered a repeller of the Colorado potato beetle. Phytophthora, which threatens tomatoes and peppers, will also be “scared” of the crop, because these plants may be nearby. From carrot flies and slugs, garlic perfectly saves carrots, raspberries, strawberries and currants.
