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Old September 19, 2017   #6
bower
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Newfoundland, Canada
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It is certainly true that the size of cloves planted plays into the size of next year's bulb, so planting the largest is generally advised.
Soil fertility also plays a part, and IMO spacing does as well. Larger spacing makes it easier to get big bulbs, so space wide if you can. I planted mine about 8 inches apart and they were nice but at the farm we planted a foot or 18 inches apart and they were huge, from the same sized cloves. Granted the farm soil is better than mine too. And depth of planting has an effect. If you plant too shallow or too deep you will get smaller bulbs. Rule of thumb that seems to work best, is height of the clove X 2 above it. so make your hole 3 clove heights deep. We had a hundred foot row of garlic that went over a rocky patch, and that area they were mostly planted shallower - the bulbs were not up to normal size. Yes fertility could play a part, but within that rocky patch the only normal sized bulbs were the ones that were planted deeper. So the depth did play a part IMO.
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