The first thing to think about is the right timing for landing. You can use the data of the long-term weather forecast or folk signs. Ideally, garlic should fall into the ground a month and a half before the onset of cold weather. If you plant earlier, he is likely to hatch and die in the winter. If you are late, the bulbs will not have time to take root and in the spring they will give bad shoots.
Plant before winter or leave until spring?
This is a question that often interests summer residents. Spring or winter garlic is better? Usually they make a choice based on the climatic conditions of the region. In addition, winter garlic, planted in late autumn, gives a large crop, but worse tolerates long-term storage. Spring will be fine. We turn to the second question on how to prepare a bed for garlic.
Choose a place for the future beds
You will need a dry and sunny area, one where in the spring snow most quickly melts. The shady side of the garden is poorly suited, especially the lowland where snow has been lying for a long time, and then melt water is collected. If there is no choice, equip high beds in the most extreme case. This is the main aspect when it comes to how to prepare a bed for garlic. Another point: consider crop rotation rules. Like all other crops, garlic cannot be planted in the same place for many years in a row. This is dangerous due to contamination of the soil, harmful insects and microorganisms accumulate in the depth of the bed, for which this crop is most suitable. This leads to a decrease in yield and deterioration in its quality. Ideally, garlic should not return to its original place earlier than after 3 years.
A good idea about how to prepare a bed for garlic is to grow cucumbers, cauliflower and white cabbage, and legumes on it in the summer. Do not plant it after potatoes and onions.
Garlic prefers light, sandy soil. If your land is heavy, prone to moisture retention, then think about adding additives in the form of sand or expanded clay. Continuing the conversation on how to prepare a bed for garlic, we turn to the tillage.
Substrate Features
Preparation of beds for winter garlic should occur a week and a half before the planned planting. Initially, the soil needs to be dug to a depth of 25 cm, thoroughly loosened to enrich with oxygen. In parallel, you need to remove all the roots of the weeds, otherwise in the spring, even before the emergence of the shoots of garlic, you will get a bed with grass.
In order for the vegetable to give a good harvest, fertilizer must be added. Humus is a good option, just do not use fresh manure. Additionally, superphosphate, potassium salt and ammonium nitrate are used. After fertilizing, the dry bed should be well shed with water. By the time of planting, you will receive moderately moist soft soil, which is just suitable for wintering bulbs.
Teeth preparation
The preparation of the beds for winter garlic is completed, it is time to proceed directly to planting. It will be necessary to sort through the seed in order to select the best. Only the largest heads should be set aside; a bad crop will not work out from bad seeds. Be sure to inspect them for damage, putrefactive, moldy, or yellow spots (bacterial spotting). Such samples must be discarded, as they infect the soil.
Another requirement: the heads must be well dried. Raw cloves will quickly release a green sprout and die in the winter cold. Disassemble the head into the teeth before the landing, otherwise they will dry out, which will significantly reduce their germination. Do not forget to remove the old mother's bottom, it will play the role of a cork, through which moisture and nutrients cannot get, which means growth will be impossible.
Planting can be done without seed treatment. But if there is a desire to insure the crop against diseases, then you can prepare a solution of the Fitosporin preparation and immerse the heads in it for 5 minutes. Previously used a complete solution. For 10 minutes, the garlic was immersed in a solution of manganese, then in salt water, and to fix the result, it was treated with copper sulfate (1 teaspoon in 2 liters of water).
Bulb preparation
Garlic, as you know, reproduces not only with cloves. Winter plantings, as they ripen the next year, release the arrow. If you do not need air bulbs, then the arrow can simply be cut off. After ripening, the seeds are harvested and stored until fall. Now they can also be planted in the garden. There is a small nuance: in the next season they will give only cloves, planting material that can be planted in the winter and get a crop in the second year.
There are undeniable advantages in this method. You get healthy seed that has not yet had contact with the soil and could not get infected. In addition, having grown winter garlic, you should leave a considerable part of the best heads for a new autumn sowing. Using bulbs will save you from such irrational distribution of the crop. So when we prepare the bed for garlic, do not forget to make another one - for the future seed material.
Planting garlic
How to prepare a bed for garlic, we have already figured out, now let's move on to planting technology. Be sure to test the soil, it should not be dense: pushing the cloves into the ground, you risk damaging them. In addition, in winter, heavy soil can push garlic to the surface where it will freeze. In this case, you need to make more sand, peat and humus. The second extreme is too light soil. If the teeth are too easily buried in it, then you should lightly tamp it with a wide board.
Since you should have prepared the bed for garlic in advance, you can start the day of planting with marking. Trace the grooves, leaving a distance of 20 cm between them. A gap of 10 cm between the plants will be sufficient. The depth of the tooth is also important. It is best if 3-4 cm remains from its top to the soil surface. With a large depth, the garlic grows small, and with a small depth it freezes.
After planting, the bed must be watered before the onset of frost, otherwise the soil will draw up moisture from the seeds.
Watering and fertilizer
The preparation of the garlic bed does not stop at the landing. In order for the plants to winter well, it is required to mulch the soil with a layer of peat, humus or sawdust. This protective layer can reach 5 cm. On top of it, gardeners lay out brushwood, branches remaining after trimming trees. This material serves to delay snow.
In spring, the mulch layer must be removed as soon as the snow melts. This is necessary so that the plants do not froze. You already know how to fertilize the garlic bed in the fall. This is humus, superphosphate, potassium salt. In the early spring, urea is fed. Bred 1 tbsp. spoon in 10 liters of water. In the summer, the procedure is repeated several more times.
Joint landing
Preparing the soil for garlic makes the bed extremely favorable for growing another plant. This is bush bean. In the spring, when the soil warmed up and green shoots appeared, this useful bean plant was sown in rows in a checkerboard pattern. Beans draw nitrogen from the deep layers of the soil, which makes it possible for garlic to use it. Another plus - plants will shade each other. In mid-summer, when you remove the garlic, your beans will reign in the garden alone. Thus, from a small area you will collect 2 crops.
To summarize
As you can see, preparing a bed for planting garlic is a very simple matter. There are few unpretentious crops in the garden that are ready to grow under almost any conditions. Observing the recommendations for choosing the time for autumn planting, the composition of the soil, the pattern and depth of the location of the cloves, you are guaranteed to get a good result. Add to this systematic watering and top dressing - and you will have enough harvest until next year. The benefit of this culture is undeniable, especially in the autumn-winter period. Garlic is a source of vitamins and minerals, in addition, an effective antiseptic. It will save you from many colds or help you recover faster.