Newby garic grower

Greetings. We live in Martinborough on 1.04 hectares. This is our third year and we have decided to cultivate an acre of garlic this season. We want to follow spray free, herbicide and insectide free practices and would appreciate any advice. So far, advice has focussed on all sorts of chemical additives which we are not intending to use at all. I've read about cover cropping for between rows and want advice and feasibility of mulching such a big area of garlic. We would welcome any advice and you are welcome to pay us a visit too.

Is your soil fertility and climate correct for garlic? If either of these are wrong, then the plants will be stressed, and they will need help to fight off the insects and diseases. Fertility is easier to correct than climate, so get that tested before you start to find out what needs to be added for the crop to be successful. If something in the soil needs removing then that will be too expensive to contemplate, but adding extra plant nutrients may also be too difficult to contemplate.

Hi Babushka,then you need to look to where you'll be getting your seed garlic from,quality seed stock is very important.

Welcome! I grow a wee patch of garlic every year (about 100 heads which lasts us a year). I just prepare the soil with compost and some manure (sheep, duck and cow as that's what we have lying around!).

The main thing I would say about growing garlic is not to grow it in the same spot every year, so you might want to look into crop rotation. A friend of ours has successfully grown garlic every year until last year, when it was infested with bugs and under-developed. The only thing he did different was to grow it in the same spot two years in a row.

Also, keep the weeds down (I hand weed, you might need to think about mulching if growing on a large scale).

Similarly we grow 2-300 heads for our own use (cooking, dressings, fresh juices ) and we do a little hand weeding but mulch with hay/straw to smother weeds once the plants are 100-150mm high. Rotate planting location and add compost, manure and a little blood and bone as needed. Any insect problems we address with a spray or two of neem.

In terms of mulch, I have learnt the hard way that it's better to use straw (pea, barley, etc) rather than hay because hay contains quite a bit of seed (especially our own hay as we (me being last-minute Lou) always leave it later than recommended to have it cut), whereas straw has had most of the seeds removed. In fact, if you could rotate garlilc with peas and make your own straw, that would be good - though I'm not sure what equipment you'd need on a larger scale (eg tractor and implements).

Seaside;420754 wrote: In terms of mulch, I have learnt the hard way that it's better to use straw (pea, barley, etc) rather than hay because hay contains quite a bit of seed (especially our own hay as we (me being last-minute Lou) always leave it later than recommended to have it cut), whereas straw has had most of the seeds removed. In fact, if you could rotate garlilc with peas and make your own straw, that would be good - though I'm not sure what equipment you'd need on a larger scale (eg tractor and implements).

Yay (a bit slow) always wondered where pea straw came from. Just sown some peas and grow garlic each year and thought i would do a load and plait it and was going to mulch it. Must sow more peas!

Howdy (almost) neighbour. Agree with LR - check fertility. Some parts of our area may well be too wet for garlic - our potatoes rotted this year in the ground with the extra rain we had, as did some of our garlic from the year before.