All my gardening life I try to use my grandmother's wise advice. But one of them was not entirely correct. It used to be customary to mulch garlic in the fall - right after planting. It turned out that this is fundamentally wrong.
What is fraught with autumn mulching
For the winter, winter garlic is usually mulched to avoid freezing. But modern winters have become much warmer and this frost-resistant culture is unlikely to die from the cold.
- At the same time, putting on a "fur coat" on garlic, we cultivate not only the bulbs of the plant, but also the larvae of numerous pests that comfortably develop under a protective layer throughout the winter and become active with the onset of warm spring days.
- With the onset of spring, the soil under the mulch warms up slowly, significantly slowing down the full development of plants.
Pros of spring mulching
It is worth carrying out this extremely useful procedure right now - in the second half of May, when the soil is already sufficiently warmed up, but, nevertheless, not overdried. This will help in solving five problems at once:
- Protects against obsessive weeds that find it difficult to germinate through a layer of sawdust, straw, pine needles or peat.
- It will significantly reduce watering - under mulch, moisture remains an order of magnitude longer than in open soil.
- It will nourish the earth, saturating it with the active substances necessary for garlic.
- It will save you from the need for constant loosening of the soil, because under the mulch the soil does not compact like open ground.
- A favorable microflora is created under the protective layer, in which earthworms, the best garden "cultivators", live with pleasure.
What can be used as mulch
Each gardener chooses “clothes to his liking” for his garlic: someone needs last year's needles or crushed peat, someone rotted sawdust or scraps. Modern gardeners have taken a step further - they switched to spunbond.
I use hay dust mixed with old sawdust for this. Fresh coniferous sawdust should not be used in the garden under any circumstances because of the high content of resins in them, which are harmful to plants.
How and when to mulch. Desirable - after the rain, after thoroughly loosening the soil. It is recommended to make a layer of mulch from 4 to 8 cm - depending on the density of the material.
Important! You cannot mulch the space near the trunk! This will cut off the access of oxygen to the bulbs and stop the growth of the plant.
I mulched my garlic just yesterday - which I strongly recommend to you, dear garden colleagues, too!
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