Planting Bulbils by Cluster
by Tom Roberts, December, 2013
Click on photos to enlarge.
This is an interim report about an alternate method of bulbil planting that we are developing that we call the “Whole Cluster Method”. We began this project in 2012. If you grow rounds by planting your bulbils this way, we would love to hear about your experiences.
In the fall of 2012 after we had planted the last of our two 300 foot beds of garlic bulbils in our usual way, we decided to try planting a few more of them as whole clusters of bulbils, that is, without breaking up the clusters at all before planting them. We understood that this would result in the growing bulbils being apparently crowded, but we were interested to see how the bulbils would respond. To ameliorate crowding somewhat, we spaced the bulbil clusters six inches apart in the row, with the rows also six inches apart. After all, we reckoned, this is how nature would do it, allowing over-mature garlic stalks to tip over, thus leaving the clusters of bulbils to sprout on the ground.
The following July when the tops of the rounds were tipping over (“When the scapes are ready, the rounds go down.”), we harvested the two beds planted our regular way, and took note of bulbil size and percentage that produced micro bulbs with their own scapes. Then we looked at the 20 foot bed of cluster-planted bulbils for comparison. What we discovered surprised us. Not only were the rounds just as big as from bulbils planted the regular way, but there was only one in the entire twenty feet that produced a micro-bulb.
Given these encouraging results, in the fall of 2013 we planted all of our bulbils via the whole cluster method, planting two 300 foot beds with four rows per bed. Both the between-row spacing and the in-row spacing was about eight inches.
January, 2016. Belatedly I can report that the whole-cluster planting technique did not work for us very well at all. Our July 2014 rounds harvest from our October 2013 bulbil cluster planting was one of our poorest ever. For some reason that we have not been able to determine, many of the cluster sites produced only one or two sprouts and some produced none at all. As a result, we have gone back to the bulbils-sprinkled-thickly-into-a-furrow method we had been employing previously.
Nevertheless, it seems the whole-cluster planting method might still be a good idea. We’ve yet to continue experimenting with it, but should in the fall of 2016.
To see where garlic fits into our rotation scheme, visit our Crop Rotations page. You mighty also like to visit:
