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when to mulch garlic

mabeldingeldine_gw

14 years ago

I have read lots of conflicting advice on when to mulch garlic. I planted mine today in my raised beds, well amended with compost, gypsum and garden tone fertilizer (2" deep, pointy end up!). I plan on mulching with chopped leaves. When do you recommend mulching? Now, or after the ground freezes? I am in zone 5, and snow showers are predicted for tomorrow! If it matters, I have heavy clay soil with lots of organic matter.

Thanks!

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Comments (7)

wcthomas
14 years ago
I mulch mine as soon as planted, which for me is mid November. Be sure your leaf mulch is very well chopped - matted leaves will inhibit the emergence of top growth in the spring.

Tom NJ
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mabeldingeldine_gw
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks, Tom. We mowed the leaves with the lawn mower and added 6 inches or so of mulch. No snow, but we had rain today.
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I have been growing garlic in north Ga. for years and although it is clay, it is not what I would call hard clay. I have never seen roots grow up. Roots grow towards water. It sound like the top soil is wetter than the deeper soil. I wonder if you are watering your plants, Kinda like when you start seeds you water from the bottom to get the roots to go deep. I mulch my garlic to help keep weeds down.. The only down side to having roots growing up would be that they will depend on getting moisture from the surface..so I would leave the mulch.
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of course garlic makes it through the winter without mulch, even in Michigan, and even if it is one foot tall when freezing temperatures start. At least the hardneck varieties, and specially if they have names like "Northern" or "Siberian". The plants originate from boreal forests and are well adapted to cold, and are known to take -60F without dying. Mulch, if I understand correctly, is to avoid soil heaving. In a bed rich in semi-composted OM, sticks, and other solids, freezing and thawing are not as harmful as in solid ground in my opinion. Due to their woodland origins, alliums typically like a little fungi in the bed, hence the supply of rotting branches (me and my collaborators throw all sorts of rotten wood in the compost pile. It is then piled aside, and buried when I make trenches for garden refuse in late fall). We mulch because garlic pushes through mulch and weeds do not, making for ultra-clean beds. The temperature is really immaterial. Then you harvest in late July, and it is too late for weeds to do any serious germination, and at the same time you have another layer of seedless earthworm castings/compost on top. I have had real winter starting with garlic as tall as a foot (planted around Sept. 15) or just planted (one time planted on Thanksgiving week end, I needed a bucket of hot water to finish the job as the soil was half frozen). Late planting does push back the schedule a bit, with harvests as late as Aug. 10, but no other effects. This year I have not planted and not even scheduled it yet, my furnace broke down and a bunch of other aggravations have limited my fun time.
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Planting garlic in spring can be done but the bulb size suffers. If left in the ground to its own devices you will see that garlic has a natural cycle of sprouting in the fall, overwintering, growing like crazy in early spring (basically as soon as the ground thaws), bulbing by mid summer, going dormant, and then sprouting again in fall. By planting in spring you are not allowing the garlic to establish roots in the fall and you are putting it behind. Even if you plant "as early as the ground can be worked" it will still be behind a fall planted clove, as the fall planted clove will most likely already be putting on new green growth or about to be when you are finally able to plant a clove in the spring. Rodney
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bloosquall
14 years ago
TomNJ gives great advice, I like using straw because of the matting issue, though it can still happen . If you can find some straw to lay down like 6" thick I feel that's better.
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TJG911
14 years ago
i agree about straw but at $9 a bale i used shredded leaves since they are free. tomnj is correct about leaves matting down that's why you want to use well chopped or shredded leaves. i found my garlic under 6" of whole leaves growing to 8" long the 1st year! once freed they stood up ok. i wondered why only a few plants emerged and when i removed the leaves i found they were compacted in wet layers that formed a dense mat so the plants were growing under the leaves.

tom
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wcthomas
14 years ago
I've had the same experience of garlic growing horizontally under matted leaves, even though the leaves were chopped with my mower. Like Tom found, when freed they recovered.

I use spoiled hay at $4-5/bale here in central NJ. In the farm country of southern Virginia I saw some selling for $1-2/bale! Apparently the seeds are killed from the spoiling process (moisture, mold, heat) as I never get any sprouts from the hay, and I've been using it for over 25 years. You can also mix the hay with chopped leaves to reduce the possibility of matting.

TomNJ
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William Sessums
2 years ago
Ever used rocks to mulch garlic? Wind here in SE Wyoming blows alot and with 60 mph gusts in fall and winter.
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zeedman Zone 5 Wisconsin
2 years ago
last modified: 2 years ago
The main reasons to mulch garlic are weed prevention, and soil temperature stabilization. Ideally, the mulch insulates the ground long enough to allow the cloves to develop some root growth before the ground freezes - which helps prevent frost heave. The insulation provided by the mulch also prevents premature sprouting during early warm spells in Spring. Rocks might reduce weeds somewhat, and the garlic should push through (unless the rocks are large) but rocks are poor insulators.

I get a few very windy days here too, and would recommend mulching with dried alfalfa (if you can get it), or an alfalfa/hay mix. Bales are not hard to come by here, and I found quite a few current Wyoming sellers here. Alfalfa binds together well when spread in a layer & wetted down. Clover hay would be my second choice.
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