When choosing a variety of garlic for planting, many gardeners prefer to take its winter variety. Such a culture has quite a few advantages, but at the same time it requires careful care. Let’s see how to properly grow garlic planted before winter.
Variety choice
Gardeners like winter garlic for a reason. Having overwintered in a natural way, the seed material quickly grows when spring comes, giving an early harvest.
Such garlic is adapted to a variety of environmental conditions. It perfectly tolerates cold snap, short-term drought, is much more hardy than the spring counterpart.
But in order for everything to work out, and the harvest was really enviable, the first thing the gardener should pay attention to is the selection of the variety. Let us briefly highlight some of the possible options.
- “Komsomolets”. One of the best varieties of winter garlic. It has large heads, where there are at least 6 large cloves. Gives large yields, has excellent immunity to fungi.
- Alcor. This is a medium maturing variety. Its bulbs are pink-purple, each with about 5 large teeth.
- Gribovsky 60. A large-fruited early variety that produces a large number of arrows. There are a lot of cloves, about 11 pieces. It has a very rich spicy taste.
- “Dobrynya”. A well-known variety of winter garlic with large heads. This is a late-ripening variety, the bulbs have a lilac tint, each with about 10-15 cloves. It is distinguished by increased keeping quality: in the right conditions it can lie up to six months.
- “Otradnensky”. A fairly frost-resistant subspecies, widely used in the field of cooking due to its delicate taste. It has pink-purple heads containing 4 to 6 cloves.
- “Zubrenok”. Variety with medium maturation. The bulbs are white, with a pearly sheen. The culture is characterized by a high degree of productivity, because large heads contain 5-6 large cloves.
- Dubkovsky. A good productive variety with impressive green feathers. The bulbs are medium in size, inside there are from 10 to 12 “kids”. Shows poor resistance to rot and nematode.
Terms of planting
In order for winter garlic to take root well in a new place and be able to give a rich harvest in the spring, it is very important to choose the right planting dates. This is a rather controversial point, since the regions of the country are very different in climate and the time of the onset of cold weather. We will give only general recommendations, but we must first of all focus on the weather and its nearest forecast.
So, winter garlic is planted in the fall. Approximate dates – September – October, up to the end of the month. In any case, it is necessary to be in time before prolonged rains begin and a serious cooling begins. Before frost should remain about a month.
In the northern regions, work is recommended to be carried out in September, in the middle lane it is better to choose the beginning of October for planting. Southern gardeners can afford to plant in the late October period.
Prepare
Having decided on the timing of planting and the variety of garlic, it’s time to start preparatory activities.
Place
Winter garlic prefers well-lit places: flat or slightly elevated. The soil plants need light, drained, with neutral acidity. A good choice would be a sandy or loamy substrate. It is worth avoiding waterlogged and heavy soils with low air permeability.
Winter garlic is planted where dill and parsley, beans, pumpkins, cucumbers, tomatoes, potatoes, peppers grew in the previous year. But the best option is to land after green manure. Mustard, clover, oats may well play their role. Do not plant garlic after it or after onions and bulbous plants, including flowers. If we talk about neighbors, then winter garlic will like to grow next to berry bushes, a variety of flowers.
Ground
As already mentioned, the soil for planting garlic must be fertile. To grow large heads in the garden, it is necessary to prepare the land in advance. Basically, this procedure is carried out in the summer. The earth is dug up well, cleaned of debris and plants. Heavy soils need to be lightened. For this, sand and compost are added to them. If the earth consists mostly of sand, then it must be diluted with clay and humus. Acidic substrates are put in order with the help of liming.
Fresh organic fertilizers are certain death for a crop, as they contain a huge amount of nitrogen. If it gets a little warmer, then nitrogen will cause a set of green mass at the wrong time for this. A more correct choice is a rotten mullein. Depending on the initial state of the soil per square meter, you need to take from 1 to 4 buckets.
In addition, 30 grams of superphosphate and 10 grams of potassium salt are added to a square of soil. However, such fertilizers can be replaced with 500 grams of wood ash.
Planting material
First, the seed must be hardened. It is placed in a cool place with a temperature of 3 to 5 degrees Celsius. He will stay there for 14 days. If you chose the heads for planting, then they must be disassembled into teeth. At the same time, it is important that the husk remains intact. The teeth are carefully examined, deformed or wrinkled are not suitable. Having selected the best ones, they are immersed in a weak solution of manganese for a quarter of an hour.
If it is decided to plant with bulbs, then no preparatory measures are required here.
Landing technology
Let’s analyze the detailed instructions for planting garlic before winter.
- First, the top layer of soil is leveled, for this it is optimal to use a rake. Next, trenches are formed with a depth of 8 centimeters. The distance between the trenches is 0,2 meters.
- The teeth are planted with a sharp tip up at a distance of 7 cm from each other. If you plant bulbs, then the distance between them will be only 2 cm. This will also reduce the distance between the trenches – up to 15 centimeters.
- The planted material is covered with soil, watered well and covered with a layer of mulch. You can take sawdust, humus, peat and other types of natural materials. The laying layer should be at least 3 cm. If, according to forecasts, a very severe winter is coming, then spruce branches are additionally placed on top.
Tip: Bulbs need to plant garlic at least once every 5 years. If you constantly plant only teeth, then the culture will quickly degenerate. And it is from the bulbs that strong and large sets grow for the next season.
Care
Growing winter garlic in the open field should be done correctly, in compliance with all the requirements of agricultural technology. Moreover, care activities begin almost immediately after the end of winter.
In the spring
If you put spruce branches for the winter, then after the snow melts it will need to be removed. But the mulch does not need to be opened, it still continues to perform protective functions. It will be removed only after the appearance of the first sprouts. This usually happens in late March or early April.
Young shoots are weak, such leaves may even turn yellow. To prevent this from happening, winter garlic must be fertilized. The first feeding for him will be nitrogen. To do this, just take a bucket of water and add a tablespoon of carbamide to it. After thorough mixing, the solution is poured over the soil on the plantation. For each square meter, 5 liters of solution are used. After 14 days, nitrogen fertilization is carried out again. It will provide a good set of green mass for the entire period of crop growth.
During the cultivation of winter garlic, much attention should be paid to watering. Irrigation in the spring is carried out once a week, using warm and settled liquid for this. Watering should be done carefully so that the water does not wash away the soil. It is best to use a watering can with small holes.
On the next day after irrigation, the earth is superficially harrowed, deepening the ripper by no more than 3 centimeters.
At the same time, the plantation is inspected for weeds. They usually become a haven for pests, so you need to get rid of them without regret.
Lettom
Summer is a period of active formation of the garlic head, so here you will have to take care of the culture more diligently. First, it is worth continuing the correct watering. As in the spring, they are held weekly. But now you need to take into account the weather. If it often rains in the spring, then the summer can be characterized by excessive aridity and heat. Under such conditions, the number of irrigations naturally increases. But 21 days before harvest, you need to stop watering, no matter how hot it is.
The third and last dressing of winter garlic is carried out in June. There are two options. The first is organic. To do this, a glass of wood ash is diluted in 10 liters of water and infused for 72 hours. The second option is superphosphate. For 10 liters you will need 25 grams of fertilizer.
Many gardeners prefer to spud winter garlic, although this procedure is not at all necessary for him. However, it allows you to get more beautiful and even heads, as well as increase the juiciness of feathers. Hilling is carried out in early July. During this procedure, you need to rake the earth from the plants.
Special attention should be paid to arrows growing from garlic stalks. Winter garlic releases them in 100% of cases. If there are no arrows, it means that you made a mistake with the choice and planted a spring variety or a regrading variety. There are no other explanations for the lack of arrows.
As soon as they grow to 10-15 centimeters, they are removed. In this case, it is important not to pull out the arrow, but to carefully cut or pinch off.
If you ignore the moment of removal of peduncles, then the heads will grow small.
Diseases and pests
One of the most dangerous diseases for winter garlic is penicillary root rot. It infects the bulbs even before they are planted in the soil. In affected specimens, the tips of the feather turn yellow, then the yellowness spreads along the entire perimeter of the plant. The result is death. It is impossible to cure such garlic, it remains only to prevent the disease.
To do this, garlic is harvested only when it is fully ripe. The neck is cut so that 10 cm remains. The bulbs are thoroughly dried to a rustle before storage.
Important: the causes of yellowing of the leaves lie not only in the above disease. Even the leaves can brighten with a lack of potassium and nitrogen, planting in the wrong type of soil, lack of watering. There are a lot of risk factors.
The second common disease is rust. It is characterized by the appearance of small rusty spots on plants. Over time, their number only grows. To cure the disease, you need to spray the garlic with Oxyhom three times. The interval between treatments is 7-14 days.
Another of the diseases can be noted peronosporosis or downy mildew. Its main feature is gray spots on the shoots. The disease will be treated with Ridomil.
Of the pests, the onion fly most often parasitizes on winter garlic. From this, the plants in the garden dry out, the processes of photosynthesis slow down in them. You can drive away the pest with the help of shag. To do this, take 250 grams of tobacco and a tablespoon of hot pepper. The collected ingredients are poured with 2 liters of boiling water, left for three days. After filtering, supplement with such an amount of water that it is equal to 10 liters. Add some grated laundry soap.
In addition to the fly, sprouts can be affected by the stem nematode. These are microscopic worms that suck out all the nutrient juices from plants. The main signs of the pest are the rapid drying of the stem and the appearance of a putrid odor. To cure garlic, it is necessary to spray with Calypso.
Harvesting and storage of crops
We can say that winter garlic is a fairly productive crop. However, the yield per 1 ha will depend on many indicators: varieties, agricultural practices, climatic conditions. The variability is large – from 11 to 45 tons.
You need to remove garlic from the beds at the moment when its foliage turns yellow and falls to the ground.
For digging, you need to choose a dry day. The heads are pulled out of the ground very simply, you just need to dig them up a little. Overdosing the crop in the soil should not be, from this the heads can crumble into individual teeth.
Harvest laid out on the beds to dry. This is 2-3 days. In rainy weather, the heads are placed under a canopy for almost a week. The stem cannot be cut, it still has benefits for the heads. When the bulbs dry well, the stem is shortened to 7 cm, and the crop is sent to dry in a ventilated area.
Important: if you plan to plant bulbs in the fall, then arrows must be left on some plants. Once harvested, they will accumulate nutrients for another 14 days. Then they must be cut, dried for a month in a cool room.
Before the onset of a cold snap, garlic can be stored outside under the protection of a canopy. Then the heads are placed in baskets or boxes, sprinkled with onion husks. Store the crop at a temperature of 2 to 4 degrees Celsius.
