Garlic Planter vs. Hand Planting: The Real Numbers
Most articles you will find on this question are written by people selling planters. This one is too — we build them. So we are going to show the arithmetic and let you check it.
Start with how many cloves you are actually planting
Garlic spacing is usually given in inches, which makes the per-acre number non-obvious. Here it is:
| Spacing | Cloves per acre |
|---|---|
| 4″ × 6″ | 261,360 |
| 6″ × 6″ | 174,240 |
| 6″ × 8″ | 130,680 |
| 8″ × 8″ | 98,010 |
(An acre is 6,272,640 square inches. Divide by your spacing.)
We will work the rest of this page on one acre at 8″ × 8″ — 98,010 cloves — and you can scale it to your own acreage and spacing. Every one of those cloves has to be picked up and put in the ground root-end down.
What hand-planting costs — and why nobody agrees on the number
This is where most comparisons quietly cheat. Published hand-planting rates are all over the place, from about 400 cloves per person-hour to over 1,000, and the reason is that they are measuring different jobs. Dropping cloves into a furrow somebody else opened is fast. Opening the trench, placing the clove root-down, and covering it — all day, kneeling, in cold October soil — is not.
The figure we work from is 300 cloves per person per hour. That is Doug Gilbert’s number from years of watching crews dig, place and cover by hand over a full day — not the first hour, when everyone is fresh. At 300 an hour, one acre at 8″ × 8″ is about 327 labour-hours of hand-planting.
If your crew is quicker or slower, divide 98,010 by your own rate and you have your number.
What a planter changes
Here is the part most equipment marketing skips.
A ride-on planter does not multiply one person’s output the way a combine does. Two people ride the PL-22, and each places 600 to 800 cloves an hour. A third person drives the tractor. That is the whole job — the machine opens the furrow, meters the spacing and closes the row, so it is a fair comparison against hand-planting counted the same way.
Call it 700 per rider, or about 1,400 cloves an hour for the machine. One acre at 8″ × 8″ is roughly 70 running hours. With three people on the job — two riders and the driver — that is 210 labour-hours.
That puts the machine crew at about 470 cloves per person-hour (1,400 ÷ 3), which gives you the one comparison that matters:
The planter comes out ahead on labour whenever a hand crew plants fewer than about 470 cloves per person per hour, counting the whole job — making the row, setting each clove root-down and covering it.
At Doug’s 300 an hour, the difference on one acre looks like this, with the same three people either way:
| By hand | With a PL-22 | |
|---|---|---|
| Labour-hours | 327 | 210 |
| Days in the field (eight-hour days) | about 14 | about 9 |
| Labour at $18/hr | $5,881 | $3,780 |
That is 117 labour-hours and about $2,100 saved on one acre, and the crop is in the ground five days sooner — with every clove root-down and nobody on their knees.
The labour cost calculator starts from the same figures and lets you change any of them.
Labour-hours are only part of the picture, though.
The reasons that actually drive the decision
1. A small crew you can actually find
The constraint in October is rarely the wage bill. It is finding people who will kneel in a field for two weeks. The PL-22 needs three: two seated riders and a tractor driver. Nobody has to be recruited to spend a fortnight on their knees in cold soil, and that is worth more than the arithmetic shows — because in a lot of townships those people simply do not exist at any price.
2. The rate holds all day
Hand-planting rates are quoted from the first hour, not the sixth. Seated riders sustain their rate through the afternoon, which means the schedule you planned is the schedule you get — and 600–800 an hour per rider at four o’clock beats a number that was only ever true at nine.
3. Orientation
A clove planted sideways or inverted still grows — it grows a bent neck and an undersized, misshapen bulb that you pay to sort out at grading, ten months later. Fully automated cup and belt planters cannot control orientation; that is the trade they make for speed. A ride-on planter with a person placing each clove has no double-drops, no skips and no upside-down cloves. This cost never appears in a planting-day calculation and it is real money.
4. One machine plants and harvests
The UC-36 and UC-48 undercutters mount to the same frame in place of the planting wheels. The machine that puts the crop in the ground in October lifts it in July — one frame, one hitch, both ends of the season.
5. It is built to your farm, and it grows with you
Every PL-22 is built to your own beds and row spacing. Row-to-row spacing is adjustable on the machine; in-row spacing is set by planting wheels made to your spacing. There is no practical minimum tractor horsepower for planting — a small compact tractor that can lift it on a Category 1 hitch will pull it. It carries a one-year warranty, it is built in one to two weeks, and when you add acreage later, you add it on the same machine.
6. Your crew comes back
Hand-planting garlic is the job people quit over.
Is it right for a small farm?
Yes — one acre and under is exactly the grower the PL-22 is built for. At that scale the reasons above are the whole story: riders sit instead of kneeling and hold their rate through the afternoon, every clove goes in root-end down with no double-drops or skips, you are not hunting for a big crew in the middle of October, the compact tractor you already own will most likely pull it, and the same frame carries the undercutter at harvest. Start at an acre and grow on the same machine.
A planter solves planting. Land, seed stock and markets are separate questions, covered in choosing seed garlic and selling garlic.
And if you want to check the machine against your own bed layout before you order, ask us whether it suits your beds — describe them on the phone and we will tell you what we know.
Run your own numbers
Our labour cost calculator takes your acreage, spacing, labour rate and — most importantly — your own crew’s observed hand-planting rate, and does this arithmetic for your farm.
The PL-22 is here — and you can call Doug on 519-379-6210 and ask him anything on this page.
Keep reading
-
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. -
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. -
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.