DISPATCHES FROM THE FARM

Just after we plant the new garlic seed stock, our practice has been to mulch, using organic oaten hay. We mulch for a few main reasons: i) To suppress weeds  ii) To moderate soil temperature, regardless of whether it's mid winter and below 0 over night or late spring  and 30 deg. mid afternoon iii) To moderate soil moisture, especially to conserve soil moisture during late spring when we don't get much rain and are irrigating prior to harvest time. The farming tradition of mulching garlic stems from the extreme northern winter climates, from where garlic originated and is still grown a lot. 

                                  

However, each season, we are finding that a lot of weeds grow out of the mulch itself (oat sprouts plus from weed seeds in the hay), so we think we will experiment with not mulching some areas of next season's garlic to see how the garlic (and weed growth!) fairs without it and to ascertain whether the expense and work involved in mulching is truly necessary to maintain the excellence we strive to produce.

Garlic has shallow roots compared to many plants and so doesn't respond well to competition for available nutrients and water from weeds.  We find our winters don't allow for much weed growth until towards the end when the weeds seem to 'feel' spring coming as daylight extends and then they grow like crazy within no time. Recently, as soon as the rain had eased up enough, we invested 3 very full days in weeding this years garlic crop. Tim along with a small team of truly fantastic casual farm workers thoroughly hand weeded every bed of garlic. Hand weeding is the only really effective way to weed garlic and to guarantee the growing garlic roots don't get damaged in the process. Minimising weeds helps ensure good sized, healthy garlic bulbs and therefore cloves.