Growing Garlic from a clove is very popular method of growing Garlic all over the world.
Garlic ( Allium Sativum L.) is a very important bulb crop grown in many parts of the world and has very high nutritive value.
Garlic is an herb and belongs to the Allium family. It is a very popular household seasoning worldwide. It started in central Asia. As per recorded history Garlic plant was in use from the last several thousand years as a popular and important seasoning. As per known history, Egyptians were using it as a seasoning as well as medicine.
China is the largest producer of Garlic and India is the second-largest producer of garlic. Other prominent garlic producing countries are Bangladesh, Egypt, South Korea, Russia, Myanmar, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Spain, and the United States of America.
India exports fresh and chilled garlic, dried garlic, dehydrated garlic flakes, dehydrated garlic powder, and garlic oil to Bahrain, Bangladesh, Germany, Japan.
India makes a lot of foreign exchange exporting fresh garlic, dried garlic, dehydrated garlic, and garlic oil to Germany, Bahrain, and Japan.
Use of Garlic in Foods
It is used in foods and beverages to add flavor in following ways:
- Fresh Garlic
- Garlic Powder
- Garlic Oil
We get garlic as a garlic bulb. Each garlic bulb consists of around 10-20 cloves. You buy garlic from the store not as cloves but as a head or knob which has many small, individual segments of a garlic head is a clove.
Worldwide Garlic production
| Country | Production (Tons) |
| China | 21,197,131 |
| India | 1,400,000 |
| Bangladesh | 381,851 |
| Egypt | 280,216 |
| South Korea | 275,549 |
| Russian Federation | 262,211 |
| Myanmar | 212,909 |
World wide area under Garlic Cultivation
| Country | Area (Hectare) |
| China | 796.809 |
| India | 261.000 |
| Bangladesh | 60.776 |
| Myanmar | 28.682 |
| Russian Federation | 28.292 |
| South Korea | 20.759 |
| Egypt | 11.875 |
How does it work?
Due to the presence of a chemical called Allicin in it, which makes garlic smell and creates special characteristics in it.
How to grow Garlic
To grow garlic from a clove, you do not require a very large space and it can grow very easily with a good healthy clove. To grow it in the soil you have to broke off individual clove from the bulb. Each bulb having around 5-20 cloves in it.
Varities of Garlic
There are many garlic varieties, but these are divided mainly into two groups:
- Hardneck
- Softneck
Softneck variety further divided into artichoke and silverskin. You must be aware of both these garlic species as both are freely available in the super market. These verities have a long shelf life of 8 months. California’s early and Polish Red are examples of artichoke garlic varieties.
As much as hard neck varieties are concerned Rocambole is good varieties, which has large cloves. This can be peeled very easily but its shelf life is only around 5 months.
Chesnok red and german white are example of Hardneck garlic varieties.
As much as garlic cultivation in India is concerned you should use following high yielding and disease resistant varieties:
- Agrifound white
- Yamuna Safed
- Godavari
- GG-4
- VL Garlic
- Agrifound Parvati
Planting Site of Garlic
Growing Garlic from a clone can be grown almost all soil, having a good quantity of organic matter. Garlic crops can be grown very easily in loamy soil which is rich in humus and potash contents. It is quite easy to grow it in sandy loam soil. Soil should be loose and good draining soil. It can also be grown in clay soil with little difficulties.
One thing which is very important for this plant is that it cannot grow well in the area which is a waterlogged area or standing water. Using sandy soil have poor keeping quality will produce not good garlic bulbs and will lighter in weight.
pH range of 5-7 will be quite Ok for garlic cultivation. Try to avoid acidic soil.
Soil preparation for Garlic
To Growing garlic from a clove, It is very important that soil must be thoroughly prepared.
After digging and plowing, the soil should be mixed with organic matter. As well-drained soil is good for garlic cultivation; it is therefore recommended that making raised beds are good for garlic cultivation from cloves. Make sure to remove stones or other debris from the planting site. Mix thoroughly compost or well-rotted cow dung manure into the bed. You should put completely decomposed Farmyard manure (FYM) @ of 20 tonnes per hectare.
At the time of preparing land for growing garlic from clove 30 kg Nitrogen, 60 kg Phosphorus, and 60 kg potassium should be given. There should be a 2nd dose of 30 kg nitrogen/hectare after 30 days of planting. If you want to improve bulb size, it is recommended to give 10 kg/hectare borax.
Planting Material
To growing Garlic from a clove, garlic can be propagated by good healthy cloves. It can also be propagated by Bulbils. To get good production larger cloves which is virus-free should be planted.
Planting Garlic
Before planting makes sure soil is fine and loose. Spacing should be maintained 15 cm X 10 cm means, the distance between row to row should be 15 cm and the distance between clove to clove should be 10 cm. Every bulb consists of several cloves. These cloves are held together with thin papery covering. You should break this thin papery covering and break cloves apart.
If you maintain spacing 15cm X 10 cm, you will need around 600 kg of cloves per hectare.
You should remember here that if you adopt close spacing then the yield per hectare will increase but the size of bulbs will reduce. In the same way, adopting broad space, the size of garlic bulbs may increase but overall yield per unit area will reduce.
At the time of planting clove must be planted with the pointed end up and the blunt ends down. Clove should push 2 inches below the ground and firm the soil around it. After planting cloves, do watering the bed.
Climate
Although garlic cultivation can be done in a range of climatic conditions it cannot tolerate extreme cold and hot. 25-30 degrees centigrade is the optimal temperature during bulb maturity.
Mulching
After planting, put a thin layer of mulching material. Mulching material can be of straw and chopped leaves. This will help in the retention of moisture in the soil as well as weed control.
Planting Care
It is important to give a teaspoon of high nitrogen fertilizers like osmocote near the plant. Make sure that if a layer of mulching material which was given initially decomposed; add more layers of mulching material. It will help control weeds and retain soil moisture.
Doing Hoeing just before maturing of garlic crop is loosen the soil and set the stage for bigger and healthy bulbs.
At the end of the spring season, if you find any flower stalks that have small bulbils, you should immediately cut these stalk off so that plant energy and food should be diverted to produce garlic bulb rather than going to other places. At the maturity time of Garlic, you should remove mulch and also stop watering as this will help to produce a good garlic bulb.
Irrigation
If you are growing garlic from a clove you can use followin03 types of irrigation methods are used:
- Furrow irrigation
- Drip irrigation
- Sprinkler irrigation
In the early stage of crops, every 3rd-day irrigation is needed but after that irrigation is needed every 15 days. The frequency of irrigation is reduced considerably when garlic crop reach maturity and completely stopped at the time of harvesting.
Weed Control
As in a method of growing garlic from a clove, garlic is closely planted, hand weeding is quite difficult as it can damage plants, it is, therefore, you can use the following chemicals to control weeds in garlic crop:
- Linuron – 2.20 kg / hectare
- Pendimethalin – 1.500 kg / hectare.
Harvesting of Garlic
Garlic crop which is grown from a clone is generally matured and ready for harvesting in 125 – 145 days.
When most of the leaves of garlic plants turned in to brown, yellowish, and shows symptoms of drying and bending, it indicates that harvesting time has come.
Once it established that plants are ready to harvest, you should carefully dig the bulbs up without damaging the bulb. Now leave garlic plant with bulbs to dry out in the shady areas. Make sure to protect it from rains. You should keep it under shade for around 7 days. After drying garlic plants and roots become dry rub them off. Cut the stem little above the bulb and store the bulbs on slatted shelves. Keep this place cool and airy.
Storage
You can sore and keep well-cured garlic for up to eight months at room temperature. For this, you should tie the garlic leaves and hangs them in well-ventilated rooms.
Yield of Garlic grown through clove
According to the variety of garlic, climatic conditions, and soil fertility you can expect yield somewhere between 50 to 100 quintals per hectare.
Availability of Garlic in the market
You can get easily Garlic from your supermarket. Garlic is available in the market in the following forms:
- Paste
- Garlic Flakes
- Powder forms
There are a lot of organic farms where farmers are producing garlic without the use of any pesticide. This garlic is free from any harmful chemical residues and good for Health.
Use of Garlic
- Taste of Food – It gives a distinctive taste to the food.
- Medicinal value of Garlic – It is a well-known fact that While cutting garlic, sulfur is produced which is good for Health.
- It is highly Nutritious and contains many nutrients like Maganese and vitamin C.
- Garlic reduces blood pressure and maintains cholesterol levels.
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