Garlic, done!

I occasionally buy some garlic bulbs, but as I have white rot in various locations I plant my expensive investments in isolated beds of MPC/mole hill soil from where onions have never been grown, and only after I've increased the cloves many times over will I risk planting them out in other locations the following year.

Looks like a good crop for me this year. Used the last of those harvested in 2013 about a week ago, so have been pulling the occasional likely looking bulb. Scapes are now ready for cutting.

It'll be interesting to compare how my garlic planted through Mypex fare compared to identical numbers in an adjacent bed grown in bare soil. Advantages so far are vast reduction in weeding and no need for watering in this dry spell.

 

Have you heard of the idea of watering the soil with a garlic (or onion presumably) solution? The idea is that white rot thinks that there is a host available, so "germinates", but then dies as no actual host is available. I've heard good things about it, as a technique, but not actually come across it in real life

I'd be interested to hear that too pls. I've never done Mypex for things like Garlic as they are planted so close together I've alwaus assumed that the Mypex sheet would be like a colander! and this less effective than things with bigger spacing. Perhaps that aint the case??

 

I've read of commercial (onion?) growers using heat treated onion waste to prevent (inhibit?) white rot, but thought it would be prohibitively expensive on a small scale and would need repeating in subsequent years. Far easier/cheaper for me just to move onion/garlic growing onto a fresh piece of land.

It is rather colander like, and hasn't fallen to bits (yet), but I've grown them through 1m wide strips as I was unsure about vast areas of closely cut holes [1]. I'll take some pics on my next (4th) trip to the plot today. The garlic through Mypex were planted 2-3 weeks later than those in open soil + the rabbit that jumped the fencing to nibble the shoots seemed to prefer those poking through Mypex.

[1] I've got a whole load of leeks ready to plant out (about 600, and I know it's late but we like small leeks) and I'm still undecided how to do it, as with garlic you simply remove the Mypex and harvest the entire crop (same with onions), but with leek harvesting spread over several months perhaps these are better grown though perforated 1m wide strips?

 

If you have the space, which is free of disease, that's a lot easier for sure. Seems to me to be ironic that you would have to grow a garlic crop on 10x the infected area ... in order to be able to treat the infected area

I did wonder about cutting a slit, the width of my raised bed, for each "row". But even so the slits would only be 9" apart or so. Same issue with leeks I suppose (spacing is much the same, from memory).

Could you just left off the Mypex, off the whole of the Leek bed, when you harvest the first one? It will be late Autumn / early Winter, and no weeds will grow thereafter, so not sure that Mypex will be needed after that point?

 

I wouldn't trust them to comply with that, plus I'd like to get at least 2 crops before finally removing sheets. 1m strips would enable that, rolling them back from the ends, and then replacing for some other crop.

But I have one of these 'things', I forget what they're called or even supposed to do, and for years I thought they were just overpriced, pretentious rubbish, but it (got severely reduced as a BD present) works great for chopping closely all around a leek's roots so it can be tugged out of clay soil. Might even permit leeks to be removed leaving a mulch sheet in-situ.



A dedicated growing through mulch thread would be handy.

I've said it before, but I just wish that some company would start selling Mypex sheets with nicely cut/hemmed holes for different plantings, that could be moved around for rotational purposes, and last for several years.

 

Its a widger ...

... well, its name is not much of a clue! Cross between a trowel and a dibber, and as you say great for levering out narrow things. A rockery trowel is similar-ish - if you needed to know that?!!

Yes please. I'm going Big Time on Mypex on the veg patch this year. All carefully measured, marked out, and cut ready for each crop (and Qty of that crop) with a view to reusing for several years. So far so good, but I could do with swapping ideas.

 

I got fed up trying to lever out the likes of leeks in Winter and find I was levering myself into the squidgy, muddy ground. I need a bigger version for parsnips! (or some better stump rooted varieties).

 

Could you, safely & without damaging them, get a bulb planter over, down and around a Parsnip in order to harvest it?

I've used that approach to remove Daffs in the lawn, that I want to move somewhere else, but 25% of them have not grown their leaves "straight up" and got chopped as a consequence. Given that the tops of Parsnips are on the surface they would work better - provided you don't grow yours so well that they don't fit within the diameter of the bulb planter.

I lift mine with a fork, without any problems. Cut the tops off a bit and roll back the Mypex so you can get at them with a fork, perhaps?

 

Garlic in bare soil on left and through Mypex on the right:




Small holes at 200mm centres in 1m wide strip of Mypex, so 25 holes/plant per square metre and assuming 50p/m2 that's 2p per plant for one season, but only 0.5p per plant if it lasts 4 seasons. 50p/year per 100 garlic bulbs seems pretty cheap to me. Might be able to plant some cell tray grown lettuce/small clumps of spring onions through it in between harvesting garlic and planting more cloves in late Autumn:



Disadvantages - ants building nests under it can be a bit of a nuisance and partially lifting sheets for cropping can allow gales to get under it.

P.S. I'd use similar spacing for leeks. Must make myself a better leek root cutting tool from some steel pipe with some of it cut to half pipe and the end sharpened to cut through roots when it's pushed down the side of the leeks, with a T handle and lower horizontal bar to tread on, a bit like a semi-circular long handled bulb planter.

 

I've just lifted 98 bulbs (different bed to ones pictured above). Back to garlic with everything again!



Lifting garlic from dry clay soil can be bit of a sod

 

Planted mine at the weekend. Although I need to get some more as the individual cloves were far bigger than I thought and only gave about 7 garlic plants!

 

Lol - definitely don't base your schedule on my actions.... this is only my 2nd attempt to grow garlic. Last time I ended up with some nice garlic-smelling green stems that never bulbed up!