I've used about every organic mulch you can name on garlic, and I think I like aged sawdust best. It forms a crust that weeds don't penetrate, then falls apart in late spring when the plants are growing vigorously. Anyone else mulch with wood?

Yes, I used composted bark/wood product as mulch. I fortify it with bagged chicken manure, balanced fertilizer, bone meal and/or blood meal. Don't need to remove this one.

I mulch with about 6 inches of shredded leaves after planting in the fall. In the spring I check the sprouts and move mulch around a bit if a sprout is "stuck" or missing in the row. Very few need help or are missing. The mulch breaks down some by mid spring, but still holds down weeds and conserves moisture. I do not remove it.

I find keeping weeds out is of great importance and without mulch that would be very hard in my intensively planted bed. Perhaps single rows would make it more of an option. Mulch also moderates swings between wet and dry and we get plenty of rain (usually) but also some dry spells. So I certainly would not pull mulch off in my garden.

Haven't had trouble with rot even in our high clay content soil. The garden is on a slight slope so there is never any water standing or pooling among the plants. I'd describe the soil as very moist after rains, not wet. If you have standing or pooling water with rains, you may need to do things differently than some of us. Perhaps contouring your beds would be better than no mulch...unless you are a super weeder. I'm not....it's my least favorite garden task.

I always mulch my garlic and leave it in place. Sometimes it's shredded leaves, sometimes it's chopped straw. I even add more mulch in late spring as the temps start rising.

Rodney

I typically start out in the fall with straw or leaf mulch, but our winter winds usually blow that away at some point during the winter. I have mixed feelings about mulching again in the spring, since by the time things start drying out here garlic season is just about over and it seems a wasted effort. Typically on wet to normal years I skip the spring mulch but on dry years I do put it back.

In past years, I've wintered garlic over both with and without mulch, and had good crops both ways. But recent years have been extremely wet in the beginning of the season, and keeping all of that moisture in was counterproductive, so I stopped mulching over the winter. The result was an insurmountable crop of weeds!!!

The weeds took over my garlic beds & went to seed, so this year I compromised, and mulched right after the thaw. The soil still stayed wet, and some of the bulb sizes are less than I hoped for... but the few weeds that came up through the straw were easily removed. I pulled the hay off shortly after I cut scapes, so the bulbs could begin to dry out as they approached maturity. (That hay was then used to mulch beans, tomatoes, peppers).

The value of mulch for weed suppression can't be over-stated - especially when rain keeps you out of the garden, and the garlic row is the only place I can't till in Spring. Additionally, I lost one variety this year to winter kill, and had high mortality in several others, so I would like to be able to mulch over the winter. To do this means tackling the other obstacle to good garlic - excess soil moisture.

Quite honestly, soil moisture is the elephant in the room for me, since most of the land available to me for gardening is heavy soil, in low-laying areas. Amending the soil to improve drainage is impractical, since I plant a lot of garlic (100' of wide row) and rotate the location every year. Hilling would probably help, but I'm not sure my back would be up to hilling up 100' of row. Unless I can find a good attachment for the tractor, I'll be looking for a location with better drainage to plant my garlic... two friends have offered to let me plant on their property, so I am optimistic.

I'd rather have some weeds and smaller heads than the entire garlic crop rot to the ground. Next year, I plan to pull the mulch in spring during the raining season. Also, I'll try to find another garden section with better drainage....

I would also pull the mulch in Spring next year. Garlic with its reputation of being anti-microbial sure does have a tendency to rot.

Our winter and spring have been so wet almost all time. So no need for mulching to keep moisture, but just the opposite. Weeds are always the problem. I have a lot of Star of Bethlehem and many other annuals. Mulch was not able to control the weeds. I'll just have to keep pulling the weeds. Raised bed and new soil should help, but too costly for my garlic bed size.

I am going to cut down on the depth of shredded leaf mulch this year from 6" down to 4". I plant intensively in 4'x10' beds in a 7x19 grid (6" spacing) so weeding in spring in the middle of the beds is not easily accomplished when the plants are 2' tall. 6" of mulch was too much for some of the plants to push thru in March so I had to 'liberate' probably 1/3 of them this year. I did have quite a bit of rotting this year but I attribute that to too much rain getting down into the stem while they were bulbing up. This year I ran soaker hoses thru all of the garlic beds but I never did use them. I know as soon as I skip the soaker hoses we will have a dry spring and I will have to hand water.