A new method for sowing garlic: seedlings emerge in just 10 days

The usual sowing time for garlic is late August. Normally, direct sowing takes 40-50 days for seedlings to emerge; if the following methods are used to treat the seeds before sowing, the time to emergence can be shortened by 3/4-4/5, which is beneficial for raising seedlings.

1. Soaking seeds in human urine. Select garlic cloves that are plump, milky white in color, free of disease spots, and free of wounds or mildew, and put them into fermented human urine (enough to submerge the garlic seeds is best) to soak for 48-54 hours. After soaking, scoop them out, drain them, and sow immediately. After sowing, cover with a layer of loose, moist fertile soil 6-8 cm thick, and pay attention to strengthening the moisture management of the soil. Generally, seedlings can emerge in 6-7 days.

2. Peel the skin to expose the tip. Before sowing, use scissors to gently clip the tip skin of each selected garlic clove, exposing the tip flesh; you can also use your hands to peel open the tip skin of the garlic cloves so that the tip skin of the cloves becomes loose. After sowing this kind of garlic seed, as long as some thin manure water is poured over the bed surface and it is covered with moist fertile soil, seedlings generally emerge in only about a week.

3. "Three-wet" sowing. Soak the selected garlic in clean water for 12-24 hours so that the seed cloves absorb enough water, achieving "wet seed"; water the sowing rows (holes) with thin manure water to achieve "wet soil"; use moist soil and miscellaneous materials for the base fertilizer and mulch to achieve "wet fertilizer." After sowing, spread a thin layer of chopped straw or water silk grass over the bed surface, and seedlings can emerge in about 10 days.

4. Sowing by clove grade. Before sowing the garlic heads, in addition to discarding seed cloves that are yellowed, soft, broken at the sprout, insect-damaged, or have discolored or moldy stem plates, sow large, medium, and small cloves separately. According to experiments, under the same water and fertilizer conditions, large-clove seeds emerge earlier, more uniformly, and with stronger seedlings than small-clove seeds, and save the need for topdressing during the seedling stage; moreover, garlic scapes increase by 14% and garlic heads by 22%.

5. Reasonable cultivation. There are two cultivation methods for garlic: flat beds and raised ridges divided into sections. In recent years, vegetable bases and suburban areas near cities have adopted the flat-bed cultivation method with large and small rows, planting garlic heads in one row and green garlic in another. This can increase land utilization and economic income without affecting garlic growth. The specific method is: sow in early to mid-September, using a row spacing of 18 cm to plant double rows, with a small row spacing of 6 cm. The left row is used to produce garlic heads, sown with large cloves, with a plant spacing of 7.5-9 cm; the right row is used to produce green garlic, sown with medium and small cloves, with a plant spacing of 3-3.5 cm, so that once the green garlic is grown, it can be supplied to the market in time.