Time to Plant Garlic
Commercial Garlic Growers love Garden Mat #1 or Garden Mat #9.
Now is the perfect time of year in the North to plant garlic; any time between September and when the ground is frozen. But, the sooner the better. If you wait until next spring, your bulbs will not be as large at harvest time.
Growing garlic has never been easier when you use either Garden Mat #1 or Garden Mat #9.
We leave our garlic mats out 365 days a year. Granted, they will not last quite as long as the rest of our Garden Mats, which we pull up at the end of the season, hose off, roll up and store for the winter. But, if left out year round our mats still last about five to eight years (not bad) if you take care of them.
Garden Mat #9 just before the first big snow.
Garlic is one of the first things to pop up in the spring. All we do is finger pluck weeds a few minutes each week. We harvest the scapes when they are young. We only have to weed our garlic bed about 30 minutes to 40 minutes an entire year!!
We generally harvest our garlic bulbs toward the end of July. We cut the stems about 2″ above the mats. Then we roll the mats up and harvest the bulbs as we go. Right after we harvest, when the mats are off the soil, we till in some good compost or manure, rake the surface smooth and then pin the mats back down. Then we wait until fall, when we plant one garlic clove per hole, about 1 ½” deep, root side down. We grow 300 bulbs of garlic a year and it generally takes about 60 minutes to plant. After that, there is virtually no weeding and nothing left to do. Just let them grow.
Garden Mats make growing garlic that easy.
If you are a commercial grower, you definitely should use Garden Mats. We have commercial growers that grow 5,000 — 30,000 bulbs a year. Garden Mats are much less expensive than straw mulch, which often produces its own weeds. All of our commercial growers swear by Garden Mats.
Garlic scapes make the best pesto, or as an addition to almost any dish. But you have to cut them when they are young.
Do you have any seconds #9 mats?
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We have a few. Email us what length.
I LOVE my garlic mat! It is on its 9th or 10th year, and yes, it is the mat that stays out the most of the year.
After I plant my garlic (and I plant about 200 seeds) I cover the mat with leaves and then blow them away in the spring.
Glad the garlic mat works for you. Thanks for the tip on covering with leaves. Could be helpful in the extra cold climates.
After pulling mats up in winter how do you keep the bare beds weed free? I thought the idea was to keep mats on during winter to prevent weeds?
You can leave the mats out all winter. We do that ourselves sometimes. You can also use blank material (no holes) to cover an area for the winter. We do that too. If you pull your mats up before the first killer frost, weeds will grow and return in the spring. We try to wait until there is a killer frost before we pull up our mats. In the spring we try to get our mats down as soon as the weather permits to retard the growth of spring weeds. We encourage you to experiment to decide what method works best.
Thanks you! This was great timing. I just had my first successful year of growing garlic. As I was thinking about how to go about planting my much larger garlic crop for next year, I was wondering if you had a mat that has the right spacing but I couldn’t remember the name of your company! (Not like it’s a hard name to remember but I was spacing😂) Then I opened my email and saw just the information I needed without having to search for it.
I am glad the timing of our last blog post worked out well for you. With Mat #9 I am sure your next crop will be even better!!
Happy Weed Free Gardening!