Articles
Written for people who grow garlic
Reference material and honest arithmetic, not press releases. Every piece here has real numbers in it, and a few have calculators you can run for your own farm.
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Garlic crop rotation: what to grow between and how long to wait Rotation is cheap disease control that only works if the break is real: long enough, free of allium volunteers, and not planted to a crop that hosts the same pests. Read it → -
When to cut garlic scapes, and why it matters Scaping is a June labour pass that protects bulb size, and it produces the first thing a garlic farm has to sell all year. When to do it, how, and what the scapes are worth to you. Read it → -
Mulching garlic for winter: timing, depth and spring Winter mulch is there to stop the ground cycling between frozen and thawed, not to keep garlic warm. When to spread it, how much, and what to do with it in April. Read it → -
How to sell garlic: the five channels compared Every garlic channel trades price against volume and your time. How the five main ones compare, and why seed garlic pays best and carries the most responsibility. Read it → -
Preparing soil for garlic: the weeks before fall planting Most of what makes a garlic field good is decided before planting day. What to do in the weeks before the crop goes in, and what has to start a season sooner. Read it → -
Buying a used garlic planter: what to inspect Used ride-on planters come up rarely and go quickly. The frame is usually fine; the thing that decides whether it suits your farm is the wheel spacing, and that is not adjustable. Read it → -
What happens if you plant garlic upside down? Upside-down garlic doesn't die — it grows into a bulb you can't sell. Here is what actually happens underground, and why it decides how a planter should be built. Read it → -
Garlic bloat nematode: how to spot it and keep it out Bloat nematode arrives in seed, not in the wind. Identification, what it does underground, and the sanitation that actually matters — including the parts no machine can help with. Read it → -
How to cure and store garlic Curing is a drying job with one variable that matters more than the rest: airflow. Here is what it does, how long it takes, and how to store what comes out. Read it → -
Garlic Planter vs. Hand Planting: The Real Numbers We build planters, so treat this with suspicion — then check the arithmetic, which is all shown: one acre, a three-person machine crew, and the hand rate where the planter comes out ahead. Read it → -
Garlic plant spacing: how close is too close? Spacing is not one decision. In-row spacing sets bulb size, between-row spacing sets what you can do about weeds, and on a ride-on planter only one of the two can be changed later. Read it → -
How Many Garlic Cloves Per Acre? Between 98,000 and 261,000 depending on spacing — 174,240 at the common 6" × 6". The full chart, the formula, and what it means for October. Read it → -
Choosing seed garlic: size, sourcing and how much you need Plant your biggest cloves, not your leftovers. How to grade seed stock, when to buy in, and how to work out exactly how much seed an acre takes. Read it → -
Garlic yield per acre: how to measure your own Every published garlic yield figure is somebody else's soil, variety, spacing and season. Here is the arithmetic to estimate yours before harvest and the sampling method to measure it after. Read it → -
Planting onion sets with a garlic planter Sets and cloves are the same problem: a small bulb, root plate down, at a spacing. We make a dedicated onion wheel. Seed and transplants are a different machine entirely. Read it → -
Hardneck vs softneck garlic The differences that matter: scapes, clove size and count, storage life, winter-hardiness. Hardneck suits the north, but softneck is not the lesser crop. Read it → -
Weed control in garlic: mulch, cultivation and the stale seedbed Garlic is a poor competitor for eight months of the year. Which weeding strategy you can run is mostly decided the day you pick your row spacing, and that is a decision made before the crop goes in. Read it → -
When to plant garlic in Ontario: a fall timeline Roughly two to four weeks before the ground freezes — mid-October to early November across most of the province. Here is the whole season, week by week. Read it → -
Scaling up garlic: what breaks first Planting is the wall most growers hit first. Curing space is the one nobody plans for until there are twelve thousand pounds of garlic and nowhere to hang it. Read it → -
Planting tulips, hops and ginseng with a garlic planter A garlic planter is really a bulb, rhizome and large-seed planter. Six confirmed crops beyond garlic — plus the honest note that garlic is what it is optimised for. Read it → -
What size tractor do you need for a garlic planter? For planting, any tractor that can lift the machine on a Category 1 hitch will do. The 40 HP number belongs to harvest, and that is the requirement people miss. Read it → -
How to harvest garlic without breaking the necks Snapped necks are a soil problem, not a technique problem. Undercutting loosens the root mass so bulbs lift clean — on the same machine frame that planted them. Read it → -
When to harvest garlic: read the leaves, not the calendar Garlic tells you when it is ready and the calendar does not. Count senesced leaves, dig a test bulb, and understand what a split wrapper costs you. Read it →
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