Bulbs of garlic: how to grow a good harvest

Traditionally, garlic is propagated by cloves – separate segments of the bulb. However, there are problems here. Firstly, there are few cloves in one garlic bulb, and if you got some valuable variety in a small amount, it will not be possible to breed it quickly – it will take years. In addition, the bulbs that are underground often get sick, but they cannot be planted.

These shortcomings are completely devoid of air bulbs – mini-onions that are formed in garlic inflorescences instead of seeds.

What is good about this method

Propagation of garlic bulbs has several advantages:

1. A lot of them. In order to get a total of 200 heads of garlic, you need to leave only 4 arrows of garlic.
2. They are healthy. Air bulbs of garlic do not come into contact with the soil and are not subject to all kinds of rot and other infections – this is a clean planting material.
3. They help to update the variety. Experienced summer residents know that over time, any kind of garlic degenerates, its heads grown from cloves become smaller. Garlic needs to be rejuvenated every 4-5 years. And they do it just with the help of bulbs. If you plant them, and not the cloves, all the signs will return – the bulbs will become large again.

Limitations

The first drawback is that this method is suitable for winter garlic. Spring shooter usually does not form, with the exception of a few varieties, for example Gulliver – it produces inflorescences.

The second problem is that large, full-fledged garlic from bulbs is obtained only in the second year. In the first season, a single-toothed bulb grows from mini-bulbs. It will have to be planted again, and only next summer will we get a traditional head with many cloves. On the other hand, this method is no more difficult than growing onions, because it is also obtained in 2 years – sevok grows in the first seed, and a large turnip grows from it in the second summer.

How to harvest garlic bulbs

Arrows at garlic bulbs begin to appear in late June – early July. To get heads that are in the ground, they are not needed – they are usually broken out, because the arrows take on a lot of nutrients to the detriment of the bulb. But to get bulbs, they need to be left – 4 – 5 will be enough.

Arrows are better to choose the most powerful, with large inflorescences – in them the onions will be larger.

In most varieties of winter garlic, the arrows are first twisted into a spiral. As they mature, they straighten up. So when they become straight – it’s time to collect the bulbs, they are ripe.

The arrows must be cut at the bottom, at the very base. Before harvesting, it would be nice to lay a film or some kind of cloth under the plants – it happens that garlic bulbs crumble.

Cut arrows are tied into a bundle and hung in a dark, warm place for 3 to 4 weeks – they should be ripened and dried. After this, the inflorescences with bulbs are cut off from the shoot and sent for storage. Here are the whole inflorescences right – it is not necessary to exfoliate the bulbs from them.

It is best to store inflorescences with mini-bulbs in a newspaper, in a dry and dark place with a temperature of 18 – 20 ° C.

When to plant bulb garlic

Bulbs of garlic can be planted in autumn and spring (1).

In the autumn. In this case, the bulbs collected in the summer are sown in late September – early October to a depth of 5 – 6 cm. The distance between mini-bulbs in a row should be 3 cm, between rows – 15 cm. Plantings in winter are mulched with peat with a layer of 2 cm.

In the spring, some of the bulbs may be on the surface of the soil – it happens that they are squeezed out by frozen soil. In this case, they just need to be buried in the soil – you can simply press it with your finger.

Spring. With this option of sowing, the bulbs are stored all winter in a dry, dark and warm place, but 1,5 months before sowing (approximately at the end of February) they need to be removed in the cold – a cellar, refrigerator or buried in the snow in a cloth bag. Onions should spend this time at a temperature of 0 – 4 ° C. If this is not done, an underdeveloped head will grow out of the bulbs.

The distance for spring planting is the same as for autumn. But the embedment depth should be less – 3 – 4 cm. It is also useful to mulch the beds with peat with a layer of 1 – 2 cm – this will protect the soil from drying out. Shoots usually appear after 10 days (2).

In both cases, before planting the bulbs, it is useful to soak for 30 minutes in a light pink solution of potassium permanganate – this will disinfect them.

When to Harvest

Single-toothed bulbs that grow by the end of the first season are dug up, like ordinary winter garlic, around mid-August, when the leaves turn yellow. They are dried and sent to a dark warm room.

At the end of September, they are again planted on the beds – everything is exactly the same as when planting winter garlic with cloves. Next year, they will make full-fledged heads, in which there are 7 – 11 cloves (3).

Popular questions and answers

To the questions of summer residents about growing garlic from bulbs, she answered us agronomist-breeder Svetlana Mihailova.

Sources of

1. A group of authors, ed. Polyanskoy A.M. and Chulkova E.I. Tips for gardeners // Minsk, Harvest, 1970 – 208 p.
2. Fisenko A.N., Serpukhovitina K.A., Stolyarov A.I. Garden. Handbook // Rostov-on-Don, Rostov University Press, 1994 – 416 p.
3. Romanov V.V., Ganichkina O.A., Akimov A.A., Uvarov E.V. In the garden and in the garden // Yaroslavl, Upper Volga book publishing house, 1989 – 288 p.