Garlic is considered a demanding garden crop that needs proper and timely care. Summer residents set aside several beds for it and want to get a harvest that will last until next year. Competent cultivation of winter garlic consists of several stages, the observance of which will help to get a large and healthy harvest of a burning crop.
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The choice of planting material
Winter vegetable varieties are shooted and non-shot. In the first version, the greens shoot arrows with caps in which the seeds ripen. They are harvested at the end of the season, planted in the winter, and the next season they get full heads of garlic. If you do not collect the seed, then reproduction can be performed with the cloves of an adult ripe vegetable. Non-firing species reproduce only by teeth.
To select the seed, it is necessary to take several dozen bulbs and disassemble them into separate cloves. Stale, blackened, lethargic or rotten slices must be selected and thrown away, they will not work out of a new plant. It should be remembered that the health of the future harvest directly depends on the seedlings. Agronomists recommend selecting seeds according to the following criteria:
- It is better to give preference to varieties that grow in the region, because garlic painfully tolerates climate change. A vegetable brought from other latitudes may not take root in the garden.
- It is necessary to carefully check the material for the presence of fungal and bacterial diseases. Infected cloves will not produce a good and healthy harvest.
- It is not recommended to choose curves and damaged lobules, they will produce small heads. There is still a high probability that the seedling will simply die during wintering.
Site preparation
To get a good harvest next year, the grower needs to make sure that the plant's root system is getting enough nutrients and moisture. Garlic has fibrous roots, which are located in the upper layer of the soil and from there they take the necessary substances for growth and development. It is recommended to choose a soil with low acidity for planting winter crops. A good option would be areas where zucchini, pumpkin or cereal plants, and cucumbers previously grew. The vegetable can be placed twice in one place only after 4-5 years.
During the preparation of the site, you need to remove the tops from the previous plantings and, if necessary, treat it with a herbicide to eliminate weeds. After 14-20 days, they begin to enrich the soil. To do this, you need to make 1 sq. m. the following fertilizers:
- 8-10 kg of humus;
- 2 glasses of wood ash;
- 1 glass of chalk;
- 2 tbsp. l. potassium sulfate;
- 1 tbsp. l. superphosphate.
It is not recommended to add organic products, because they negatively affect the quality of the cloves and reduce their shelf life. After the procedure, the bed is dug to a depth of about 25-30 cm. Before planting seed, the land must settle.
Landing time and technology
Winter garlic is planted during dry, cool weather. This allows the root system to develop and slow down the growth of the aerial part. Gardeners recommend 3-4 weeks before the onset of frost. During this period, the seeds will have time to take root, but they will not allow the greenery to grow. In central Russia, planting of winter crops begins in the first half of October. In other regions, terms may vary depending on climatic and weather conditions.
The average size of the cloves selected for planting should be within 3-4 cm. Agronomists advise to give preference to the two-line sowing pattern, which implies adherence to the following distances:
- between holes in a row - 10-11 cm;
- between the lines - 10-15 cm;
- in row spacings - 35-40 cm.
The beds are not made very deep, the seeds are placed to a depth of 5-6 cm. In this case, they just need to be laid, and not pressed into the ground. After that, the grooves are covered with soil, humus, but not tamped. From above, the bed is covered with dry stems of cut garden plants or tightened with spunbond. The shelter is removed in the spring, after the snow melts and a stable above-zero temperature is established.
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