Family garlic: planting and care, collection and storage with photos and videos

Many summer residents grow garlic on their plots. Before you start planting it, you have to spend time choosing the most suitable variety. Garlic Family is popular among vegetable growers, as 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.

This variety is no different from other bush varieties of vegetables.Family garlic got its name due to the fact that not one bulb or slice is formed on its head, but about 5-6 pieces at once. They are much smaller than regular varieties of the vegetable, but weigh about the same.

The distinctive features of the fruits include their bright taste and aromatic smell, which can be noticed immediately after digging out the garlic. Also, the advantages of the harvested crop include the duration of storage, which is more than 10 months. Under optimal conditions, garlic fruits can be stored for a year and a half.

The harvested crop is often used in the culinary field when preparing vegetable dishes or preserves. Garlic heads are also sometimes used in medicine to create medicinal decoctions and infusions.

Some vegetable growers are sure that only residents of the middle zone of the country will be able to get a good harvest, since it is there that 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 extremes.

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, landing begins on October 1-5. However, in warm weather, you can reschedule the procedure for the 15-20th day. Each vegetable grower determines the optimal planting time independently, depending on the weather and outside temperature.

Winter garlic differs in the size of its fruits, consisting of several identical teeth. 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 time of flowering, small empty flowers without seeds are formed on the bushes. The seeds are 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 size of the fruit of this species is much smaller than that of the winter. However, in one bulb there are about 10-15 cloves. All of them are completely different and differ in their size. The harvested crop of spring garlic is perfectly stored even in rooms with room temperature. Under optimal conditions, it will not spoil for 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 the seedlings can be transplanted into the garden by spring.

Soil preparation

Garlic loves the soil, which contains a lot of nutrients and therefore it is better to prepare the soil mixture in advance. To do this, the earth is mixed in equal amounts with wood ash, nitrophoska and superphosphate.

After top dressing is added to the soil, the soil is disinfected to remove pests and pathogens from it. To carry out such a 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.

Capacity selection

Before growing garlic seedlings, you need to decide in which container it will grow. Some advise to grow 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. They can grow several seedlings at once. Instead of planting boxes, you can use cassette containers, which consist of several combined pots.

Landing

After choosing a container for planting and preparing the soil mixture, you can start planting.

First, all containers are filled to the top with soil and watered with warm water. Then shallow holes are made for planting garlic cloves. When all the garlic is placed in the soil, it is covered with earth and re-watered. All containers with planted garlic are transferred to a warm room for further cultivation.

When can I plant

When using the seedling method of growing garlic in open ground, it is planted in the spring. Many people think 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 should be done only if it does not fall below zero degrees. Even small frosts can destroy planted garlic. Therefore, it is recommended to engage in landing no earlier than the second half of April.

Also, before planting, pay attention to garlic seedlings. It must be strong enough, as weak seedlings will not be able to take root normally in the garden. Seedlings should not be transplanted into open ground if their height is less than 5-6 cm. Such weak seedlings can only be planted in greenhouses where the optimum temperature and humidity are maintained.

Soil preparation

Family Garlic, like all other varieties, grows well in sandy and light soil. Therefore, if there is loamy soil on the site, then expanded clay mixed with sand will have to be added to it. These components improve the drainage properties of the earth several times, so that it absorbs moisture better.

Also, this vegetable grows much better in fertile soil with nutrients. To increase fertility, the site is treated with manure. It is not recommended to fertilize the soil with fresh organic top dressing along with it, as this will negatively affect the yield of garlic.

Soil preparation is done only after it is fully 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 are spent on each square meter of the garden.

To increase yields, you can add a few tablespoons of urea and superphosphate to the ground.

Plots with alumina soil are fertilized with humus from fallen leaves, peat and river sand. After adding dressings, the soil throughout the area will have to be re-loosened and poured 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 it 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 used to grow.

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.

Garlic seedlings should 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 in an upright position sit in the grooves, sprinkle with soil and re-water. Some gardeners mulch the soil after planting to protect seedlings from possible temperature changes.

Care Requirements

Garlic, like any other vegetable, needs constant care during cultivation. Proper care of garlic bushes will speed up their growth and improve yields.

Irrigation

Without enough moisture, the arrows of the plants 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 earth does not have time to dry out and is always moist. If the street is often cloudy days, the number of waterings is reduced to once a week.It is recommended to water the seedlings in the evening, after sunset.

Fertilizer

In cultivation, garlic is fertilized in three stages. For the first time, top dressing is applied to the soil after the appearance of the first true leaves. In this case, a solution prepared from water and urea is added to the soil.

The second top dressing is carried out in two and a half weeks, before flowering. The site is fertilized with nitroammofoska and nitrophoska. The final stage of feeding garlic is carried out in early summer, when the bulbs are formed. The soil is fertilized with a solution of superphosphate.

Weeding and loosening

After watering, it is imperative to loosen the soil, as 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.

The soil is loosened for the first time 15 days after planting the seedlings. Re-weeding is carried out after a week and a half. During loosening of the soil, all weeds are sure to be weeded out, due to which soil fertility may deteriorate.

Diseases and pests

Garlic is susceptible to diseases, among which jaundice, fusarium, rust or gray rot are most common. Among pests, garlic bushes are often attacked by onion fly, centipede, nematode, moth and secretive proboscis.

Harvest and storage of crops

The harvest of ripe garlic crops is carried out from the second half of summer until early September. Before harvesting the fruit, you need to make sure that the old feathers on the bushes have turned yellow, and new ones have stopped appearing. If garlic is not harvested in time, its growth will be activated again, and the heads will gradually fall apart into small pieces.

The entire harvest is dried for several days in a ventilated area and transferred to the cellar for further storage.

Conclusion

Garlic is considered a popular vegetable grown by many gardeners. To get a good harvest, you need to familiarize yourself with the features of planting and growing garlic bushes.

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