17 October 2021 Planting Garlic Posted on 10/17/2021 by Durgan 17 October 2021 Planting Garlic 17 October 2021 Planting Garlic Six 16 foot rows prepared for planting garlic. One row 8 feet for bulbils. One partial row for rounds. And one row for the production of rounds. Three rows of full Round output. Total five rows. Have one more of full size garlic to plant. Garlic is hard neck and is planted in October for harvest in 2022 in August. The bed was prepared about one month ago. A board was placed in the planting row to keep the area lightly moist so the cloves can be easily pushed into the soil. The garlic has no difficulty in pushing through the mulch in the Spring. The garlic usually gets enough moisture for growing. By planting Bulbils and Rounds the garic is renewed every three years.
Me too was planting garlic on the Oct 17. And elephant garlic the very next day. I planted 250 separated cloves of garlic (7.5 m x 5 rows, 15x15 cm distance). I don't use bulbils for renewing my garlic breed for 15 years already, I just select largest and healthiest cloves for planting. I planted 125 tiny, 70 medium and 30 large cloves of elephant garlic (7.3 m x 5 (3) rows, small @15x15 cm, medium @20x15 cm and large @30x20 cm). Elephant garlic is under special attention, because of poor reproduction rate and a bit disappointing harvest, and got planted conditionally. This year we had long drought, that was hard for garlic. But if next year the harvest won't improve significantly, I'll cull all my elephant garlic, as I did with Chinese garlic this year
I have gown Elephant garlic. Perfect large cloves but I dislike the taste. Don't grow it now. I find the wood chips mulch almost make watering garlic while growing to be generally unnecessary. The chips retain sufficient moisture. I plant the smallest cloves. I have found the size of the clove has little effect on final bulb size. Baby the growing garlic, always sufficient water and remove any weeds. And use wood chip mulch IMO.
I dislike the taste, when elephant garlic is raw (unlike regular garlic, that I can eat both raw and cooked), but if roasted or fried it tastes ok for me. My soil is very sandy, it is easy to keep it weed free. I don't use chips, because it would make digging significantly harder. It's pure fun to dig pure sand.
