Time to Plant Garlic

Posted on August 31, 2022 by Peter Comart  |  8 comments
Garlic

Commercial Garlic Growers love Garden Mat #9.

Fall 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.

Growing garlic has never been easier when you use Garden Mat #9.

 

Garden Mat #9  is about the only mat we leave out 365 days a year. Granted, it 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.

Once a year in the fall, when we are ready to plant, we pull back the mats, till in some good compost or manure, rake the surface smooth and pin the mats back down. Then we plant one garlic clove per hole, about 1 ½” deep, root side down. We grow 300 bulbs of garlic a year.  It generally takes about 30 to 60 minutes to prepare the soil and then another 30 minutes to plant. After that, there is virtually no weeding and nothing left to do.  Just let them grow. Garlic is one of the first things to pop up in the spring. After that, all we do is finger pluck weeds a few minutes each week. We generally weed our 300 plant bed about 30 minutes to 40 minutes an entire year!!  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.

 

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8 comments
  1. fitchfamly says:

    Do you have any seconds #9 mats?

    Sent from the all new AOL app for iOS

  2. elise.bratcher says:

    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.

  3. Jacrass says:

    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?

    • Peter Comart says:

      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.

  4. wrightja2000 says:

    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.

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