Small garlic bulbs?
I recently harvested my garlic for the year and a majority of my bulbs were quite small. I followed all growing directions I could find, used large cloves, mulched, weeded, etc. but still got this result. Any suggestions?
Tags: cloves, Garlic, small bulbs
July 16th, 2009 at 3:57 pm
Make sure you have good soil fertility. lots of organic matter and watering must be consistent when there is no precipitation.
July 17th, 2009 at 5:11 am
Make sure you trim the scape when it gets a small bulb at the top. Don’t forget to eat the scape – they’re delicious!!
Trimming the scape off is like trimming suckers from a tomato plant – it triggers the plant to start putting its energy in to the place it can reproduce from (in this case, the garlic bulb)
August 6th, 2009 at 9:15 pm
At Grey Duck Garlic we experiment with different organic garlic growing methods to see which one will produce the biggest and tastiest garlic bulbs. Here are some things that I have found that work: 1) Use varieties that are suited for your climate. Garlic can be specific or adapted to a certain area. 2) Plant in the fall, not the spring. We plant in October. 3) How large were your large cloves? In our experiments a 12-15 gram clove produces the largest bulbs. Bulbs from these large cloves can be over 3 times larger than an 8 g clove. 4) Put lots of organic matter in the soil. Our biggest garlic grows in the soil heavily supplemented with organic matter. 5) Choose a variety that grows big bulbs such as Georgian Crystal or Siberian. There is a lot of size difference between garlic varieties. Some garlic is naturally small. 6) Buy good seed garlic so you know you are getting quality stock.
By the way, watering can be important but we have totally dryland garlic (no irrigation) and have no problem with growing large bulbs.
Good luck next year with growing big garlic, Susan