How to Grow Garlic Sprouts? A Detailed Guide to Scientific Cultivation Techniques

Garlic sprouts are a common item in the kitchen and a great helper for homemakers. When growing garlic sprouts on a small household scale, you are not relying on them to make a profit, so you can grow them however you like, as long as it suits your needs. But for large-scale commercial planting, cultivation techniques become very important.

How to Grow Garlic Sprouts

There are two sowing methods for garlic sprouts:

1. Drilling (row sowing): Prepare the graded garlic cloves, open furrows 3 cm deep at a row spacing of 13-16 cm, with a plant spacing of 3-4 cm. Place the garlic cloves, then cover with soil to a depth of 2-3 cm and firm it down. Sow large and small cloves separately so the seedlings grow evenly, which makes management, harvesting and marketing easier. The seeding rate for drilling is 150-250 kg per mu.

2. Bed planting: Place the prepared whole garlic bulbs onto the cultivation bed one against another, as tightly as possible. Fill the gaps between the bulbs with loose garlic cloves. Each square meter requires 15 kg to 20 kg of dry garlic bulbs. If the bulbs vary in size, pad with sand or soil beneath them so the tops are level even if the bottoms are not. After planting, pat them down with a wooden board. This both presses the bulbs tightly against the sand or soil below and overcomes the problem of an uneven surface after planting, which makes management difficult. However, do not do this if the sprout buds have already emerged. After planting, cover the bed surface with 3 cm of fine sandy soil, rake it level and pat it firm. Pat it again 3 days later to prevent the bulbs from being pushed up ("jumping garlic") as roots grow, which also makes cutting the garlic sprouts easier.

Scientific Cultivation Techniques for Garlic Sprouts

1. Select superior varieties and prepare the garlic seed properly. For growing summer-autumn garlic sprouts, try to choose excellent early-maturing multi-clove garlic varieties. Before planting, separate the garlic bulbs, grade them into three sizes (large, medium and small cloves), and soak the separated garlic seed in well water (which is cooler) for 12 hours to break dormancy and promote rapid sprouting.

2. Apply sufficient base fertilizer and sow at the right time. After tilling and leveling the land and opening the "three ditches" between beds, apply all the base fertilizer at once. Generally, per mu, apply decomposed manure, 20 kg of urea, 50 kg of phosphate fertilizer, 15 kg of potash fertilizer, or 50 kg of a high-quality three-element compound fertilizer. With sufficient base fertilizer applied, sow from early August to early September, or from late September to late October.

3. Plant at a reasonable density and strengthen field management. Sow in hoe-opened furrows, generally with a row spacing of 10-15 cm and a plant spacing of 3-5 cm, using 150-200 kg of seed garlic per mu. When planting, scatter the garlic cloves into the hoe-opened furrows, following the spacing, using both hands, and cover with soil by hand as you sow to prevent the cloves from tipping over. Immediately after sowing, water thoroughly, and cover with soil once more after watering. Water a second time 3-4 days later, and apply 20 kg of ammonium sulfate along with the water. After fertilizing, water every two days, for 3 consecutive waterings. When the seedlings reach 20 cm tall, cover with soil a second time. At the same time, after emergence, pay attention to spraying pesticides to control pests and diseases.

4. Protect seedlings from scorching sun and harvest at the right time. The early growth stage of summer-autumn garlic sprouts falls in hot weather. You can build a flat shade frame 1 m high and cover it with a shade net or straw to prevent the seedlings from being scorched and killed by the sun. Cover before 8 a.m. every day and remove it after 5 p.m. When the garlic sprouts reach more than 20 cm tall, begin harvesting. You can either pull up the seedlings or cut the sprouts. Harvest every 10-15 days, and apply fertilizer after each cutting, using 20 kg of urea per mu diluted in water. In this way, you can keep cutting until the Spring Festival.

Planting Time for Garlic

The planting time for garlic depends on local climate conditions and is also related to the variety. Different growth stages have different temperature requirements. The garlic planting season is in autumn, generally from late September to early October, and the harvest season is between spring and summer of the following year. The optimal planting period for garlic is to let the plants grow to 5-6 leaves before overwintering, when the plants have the strongest cold resistance, will not be frozen to death in the severe winter, and will have a good foundation for successfully passing vernalization. In the Yangtze River basin and areas to its south, sowing is generally done in mid-to-late September. In areas north of the Yangtze River, because the climate is cold, sowing needs to be moved up to August.

Harvesting Garlic

1. Harvesting garlic scapes: When the scape extends 6-7 cm out of the leaf sheath, it can be pulled. For some vigorous varieties, because the scape is thicker and easy to break when pulled, the "stick-twisting method" can be used: take a bamboo stick with a sharpened tip. When pulling the scape, hold the scape with one hand and insert the bamboo stick into the stem with the other hand (at a point 5-7 cm above the ground on the false stem), cut off the garlic scape, and then pull it out.

2. Harvesting garlic bulbs: Garlic can be harvested about 25 days after the garlic scapes are harvested (when the false stem lodges). For other varieties whose false stems do not lodge, harvest when the basal leaves begin to turn yellow and the outer skin of the bulbs becomes thin. If mature garlic is not harvested in time, especially in rainy conditions or when soil moisture is high, the outer skin of the garlic can easily turn black and rot, and the bulbs may easily split apart. Varieties with more leaves and thick, long false stems produce thick scapes, large bulbs and large cloves at harvest, giving better market quality. Therefore, when sowing, try to choose larger garlic cloves as seed.

Growing garlic sprouts requires choosing the right time and also selecting good garlic seed. Good seed is half the success. In addition, harvesting is also a very important step. In short, to achieve high yield and high profit from garlic sprouts, growers need to invest a great deal of thought and effort.