Tools Make Garlic Growing Easier

Tools Make Garlic Growing Easier 34-5-9 A homemade planter and a modified fertilizer spreader save time and labor for first-time garlic grower Bob Sterling. The retired Andover, Ill., mechanic, who was raised on a dairy farm, first experimented to find the best crop to grow on his 3 acres. He decided on garlic last year and prepared the field to plant in October. He used one of his old tractors, a Deere L with disc hillers on the cultivator, to make raised rows 30 in. apart. He made a planter out of square aluminum with 8 wooden points bolted on every 6 in. To make the points Sterling cut up an old hoe handle and turned the pieces on a lathe. They're mounted so they make 4-in. deep holes in the ground. He simply walked along and pushed it into the ground, placing the end point in the last hole to keep the row in line. "I made the planter to make planting go as fast as I could, and it saved quite a bit of time. The holes are all even and the same depth," Sterling says. "Where the soil was hard I just stepped on the planter." Sterling's wife, Sonja, followed behind planting the garlic and kicking dirt in the hole. They planted 1,400 garlic cloves in seven 100-ft. rows. Sterling modified the axle and put 20-in. wheels on a fertilizer spreader to get over the raised rows to spread soybean meal, which decomposes slowly and is a good source of nitrogen. He followed up with a 4 to 5 in. layer of straw to prevent freezing and to serve as mulch. In April, he used a backpack sprayer to spray a blend of seaweed and fish emulsion fertilizer. He harvested in mid-July. "Some were almost as big as baseballs," Sterling says. "I grew 7 varieties, mostly hardnecks, and some softnecks." He tied them in bunches of 10 to dry and plans to market them locally. "If they sell well, I would like to plant twice as much next year," Sterling says. Contact: FARM SHOW Followup, Bob Sterling, P.O. Box 12, Andover, Ill., 61233 (ph 309 521-8794; LST1167@theinter.com).

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