Many summer residents grow garlic on their plots. Before you start planting it, you have to spend time choosing the most suitable variety. Family garlic is popular among vegetable growers, since planting and caring for it is quite simple.
Description of Family Garlic
Before you start planting and growing this variety, you need to familiarize yourself with its description and distinctive characteristics in more detail.
This variety is no different from other bush varieties of vegetables. Family garlic got its name due to the fact that not just one bulb or clove is formed on its head, but about 5-6 pieces at once. Their size is much smaller than regular varieties of the vegetable, but they weigh about the same.
The distinctive features of the fruits include their bright taste and aromatic smell, which can be noticed immediately after digging up the garlic. Also, the advantages of the harvested crop include the storage duration, which is more than 10 months. Under optimal conditions, garlic fruits can be stored for one and a half years.
The harvested crop is often used in the culinary field in the preparation of vegetable dishes or preserves. Garlic heads are also sometimes used in medicine to create medicinal decoctions and infusions.
Some vegetable growers are confident that only residents of the middle zone of the country will be able to get a good harvest, since that is where the best conditions for growing vegetables are. In other parts of the country, yields will be slightly lower if garlic bushes are not grown in greenhouses or greenhouses. Experienced gardeners advise growing the variety in greenhouse conditions to protect the bushes from pests and temperature changes.
Types and varieties
There are two main varieties of garlic that you need to familiarize yourself with in advance - winter and spring.
Winter
This type of garlic is not planted in spring, but in mid-autumn. Most often, planting begins on October 1-5. However, in warm weather, you can postpone the procedure to the 15th-20th. Each vegetable grower determines the optimal planting time independently, depending on the weather and outside temperature.
Winter garlic is distinguished by the size of its fruits, consisting of several identical cloves.If you cut the onion into two equal parts, you will notice that in the center there is an arrow around which all the garlic cloves are located.
At the moment of flowering, small empty flowers without seeds form on the bushes. The seeds are found in aerial bulbs that appear on the plant after flowering.
Spring
The distinctive features of this species include the fact that its bulbs do not have a central stem. Also, in adult plants, bulbs do not form in the upper part of the bushes, and therefore spring garlic reproduces only with the help of young teeth.
The fruit size of this species is much smaller than that of the winter variety. However, one onion contains about 10-15 cloves. They are all completely different and differ in size. The harvested spring garlic crop is perfectly stored even in rooms at room temperature. Under optimal conditions, it will not deteriorate within 1-2 years.
Preparing seedlings
Before you start planting garlic in open ground, you should start growing seedlings. It is recommended to plant it in autumn or winter so that by spring the seedlings can be transplanted into the garden.
Soil preparation
Garlic loves soil that contains many nutritional components and therefore it is better to prepare the soil mixture in advance. To do this, the earth is mixed in equal quantities with wood ash, nitrophoska and superphosphate.
After adding fertilizers to the soil, the soil is disinfected to remove pests and pathogens from it. To carry out this procedure, copper sulfate is added to the ground.
Some vegetable growers add peat with loam and sand to the soil to improve the quality of the soil mixture.
Selection of capacity
Before growing garlic seedlings, you need to decide in what container it will grow.Some advise growing it in plastic pots, in which almost all plants take root.
However, these pots are quite small, so it is better to use boxes instead. You can grow several seedlings in them at once. Instead of planting boxes, you can use cassette containers, which consist of several combined pots.
Landing
Having chosen a container for planting and prepared the soil mixture, you can begin planting.
First, all containers are filled to the top with soil and watered with warm water. Then shallow holes are made for planting the garlic cloves. When all the garlic has been placed in the soil, it is covered with soil and watered again. All containers with planted garlic are transferred to a warm room for further cultivation.
When can you plant?
When using the seedling method growing garlic in open ground it is planted in the spring. Many people believe that spring planting is much easier than autumn planting. In this case, you do not have to spend a lot of time and effort preparing the site.
Before you start planting seedlings, you need to pay attention to the temperature outside. Planting is worth doing only if it does not fall below zero degrees. Even slight frosts can destroy planted garlic. Therefore, it is recommended to plant no earlier than the second half of April.
Also, before planting, pay attention to garlic seedlings. It must be strong enough, since weak seedlings will not be able to take root normally in the garden. Seedlings cannot be transplanted into open ground if their height is less than 5-6 cm. Such weak seedlings can only be planted in greenhouses, where optimal temperature and air humidity are maintained.
Soil preparation
Family garlic, like all other varieties, grows well in sandy loam and light soil. Therefore, if the site has loamy soil, then expanded clay mixed with sand will have to be added to it. These components improve the drainage properties of the soil several times, so that it absorbs moisture better.
Also, this vegetable grows much better in fertile soil with nutritional components. To increase fertility, the area is treated with manure. It is not recommended to fertilize the soil with fresh organic fertilizers along with it, as this will negatively affect the yield of garlic.
The soil is prepared only after it has completely warmed up at the end of March. The entire area is carefully dug up so that the earth is not too dense. Then, about 4-5 kg of humus is consumed for each square meter of garden.
To increase productivity, you can add a few tablespoons of urea and superphosphate to the soil.
Areas with aluminous soil are fertilized with humus from fallen leaves, peat and river sand. After adding fertilizers, the soil throughout the entire area will have to be loosened again and watered with warm water to increase humidity.
Landing
Before planting, it is recommended to determine the area of the garden that is best suited for growing garlic bushes. To do this, you need to figure out, after which you need to plant garlic. Garlic seedlings grow well in areas where peas, beans or pumpkins were grown. It is not recommended to plant them in places where cucumbers, carrots or onions previously grew.
Having chosen a suitable plot in the garden and finished preparing the soil, they begin planting. First you should start marking the beds on which the bushes will grow.The distance between the beds is made at least 35 cm. After marking, small holes are made on each bed with a depth of no more than 10 cm. The holes should be 25-30 cm apart from each other.
Garlic seedlings must be planted very carefully so as not to damage anything. Before placing the seedlings in the ground, all holes are thoroughly moistened with water. Then the seedlings are planted in an upright position in the furrows, sprinkled with soil and watered again. Some gardeners mulch the soil after planting to protect the seedlings from possible temperature changes.
Care requirements
Garlic, like any other vegetable, must be constantly looked after during cultivation. Proper care of garlic bushes will speed up their growth and improve productivity.
Watering
Without enough moisture, the shoots of the plant begin to turn whitish and gradually wither. Therefore, it is necessary to periodically moisten the soil so that the bushes do not dry out. The bushes are watered every 3-4 days so that the soil does not have time to dry out and is always moist. If there are often cloudy days outside, the number of waterings is reduced to once a week. It is recommended to water the seedlings in the evening, after sunset.
Fertilizer
When growing, garlic is fertilized in three stages. For the first time, fertilizing is applied to the soil after the first true leaves appear. In this case, a solution prepared from water and urea is added to the soil.
The second feeding is carried out two and a half weeks later, before flowering. The site is fertilized with nitroammophoska and nitrophoska. The final stage feeding garlic carried out at the beginning of summer, when the bulbs are forming. The soil is fertilized with a solution of superphosphate.
Weeding and loosening
After watering, it is necessary to loosen the soil, since the surface of the earth is covered with a dense crust. If you do not get rid of it in a timely manner, the supply of oxygen and moisture to the roots will deteriorate.
For the first time, the soil is loosened 15 days after planting the seedlings. Repeated weeding is carried out after a week and a half. When loosening the soil, be sure to weed out all the weeds, which could deteriorate the fertility of the soil.
Diseases and pests
Garlic is susceptible to diseases, among which the most common are jaundice, fusarium, rust or gray rot. From pests on garlic bushes often attacked by onion fly, centipede, nematode, moth and secretive proboscis.
Harvest and storage
The ripe garlic crop is harvested from the second half of summer until the beginning of September. Before harvesting the fruits, you need to make sure that the old feathers on the bushes have turned yellow and new ones have stopped appearing. If you do not collect the garlic in time, its growth will reactivate and the heads will gradually begin to disintegrate into small pieces.
The entire harvested crop is dried for several days in a ventilated area and transferred to the cellar for further storage.
Conclusion
Garlic is considered a popular vegetable that is grown by many gardeners. To get a good harvest, you need to familiarize yourself with the features of planting and growing garlic bushes.
