Topic: Improving soil for garlic

[caroline7758]

After a poor crop this year, possibly due to weather but not sure, I'm thinking about giving this year's bulbs a bit of TLC. Would pelleted chicken manure before planting help? Or home-made compost? Anything else?

[galina]

Many of us had a poor garlic crop, because of problems with rust - not enough good green leaf to nourish the developing roots and then not enough growing time. 

My first suggestion is to be sure to remove all plant material from this year.  Probably burn rather than compost.  There are other overwintering plants that carry on rust, like hollyhocks and leeks.  A garlic bed should be as far away from those as possible and certainly not on the same bit of ground they were grown this year. 

Other than that, spacing - perhaps a little wider than normal for good air flow.  When the bulbs develop they need watering.  This is often the time when it gets a bit hot and dry here in the UK.  I would not over fertilise because this could result in bulbs that don't store as well.

Best of all is good sunshine as the bulbs ripen - unfortunately we can't get that to order.  Good luck for next year.   

[Deb P]

I think the hot dry summer affected crops and mine were ready much earlier than I had expected, so you are not alone!

Any organic matter such as your compost might improve the soils ability to hold moisture, but it will probably have a lot of weed seeds in it which once germinated will provide competition for your garlic, unless you have had a really hot heap, so that idea could be a mixed blessing.

I do hoe in a few handfuls of chicken manure pellets in the spring over my alliums, doesn't hurt to give them a little boost then I think?

Alliums follow 'others' such as sweetcorn and squash in my lottie rotation which are heavily manured, so there is usually a reasonable amount of organic matter still left when they are planted the following year, ? look at your rotation and see if it could be tweaked if necessary?

Lastly garlic always gets a bit of rust, but it doesn't usually affect the crop much. I've found Marco reliable; all others I've tried including IOW, posh French types etc. have yielded smaller sized crops so that's the variety I stick to now. I got good results when I kept some of my own and replanted it, but the last couple of years haven't been able to.

[BarriedaleNick]

I have just about given up with garlic on the plot and do them at home on troughs.  I get so much rust no matter what I do and yields are terrible.

[Tee Gee]

Would pelleted chicken manure before planting help? Or home-made compost? Anything else?

At planting out time I would only use a slow release general fertiliser such as FB&B or Growmore to let the plants take up what they need over the winter which you will find is not very much as they will go into a semi-dormant state when the temperatures drop!

In Spring as the soil is warming up then boost them into growth with your pellets, or some such high nitrogen fertiliser.

If you do it the other way around you could promote too much lush growth going into winter which may get killed off with the frosts then your plants would have to start again.

It might not be as the experts would suggest but that the way I do it and it works for me.

I find the type of winter we get seems to play a part in cropping i.e. I like it to be really cold and not cold and wet as we had last winter, which in my opinion I think caused the poor cropping.

This year I have bought some new stock from Robinson s (usually I save my best bulbs for planting out) So I am hoping for a cold frosty winter.

Another factor I see with a cool wet winter is that the wildlife seem to be well off in feeding terms as there is plenty around for them to feed on, so they do not seem to forage for the weed seeds and pests on the soil as they would in colder weather.

I think last winter is one of the reasons for me having a bumper crop of chickweed and Fat Hen the birds did not eat the seeds!

As I say....these are only opinions!..Tg

[Jokerman]

My Garlic was awful this year, for the first time ever they failed. Lots of Rust and the bulbs were so small it wasn't even worth taking them home.

Oddly though, my Elephant garlic was the best it's ever been.

[caroline7758]

Thanks, everyone, for taking the time to reply- lots of helpful advice!