Garlic Seed Size, Plant Spacing, and

The Obsessive Quest for Bigger Heads

December 2017
By Andy Leahy <andyleahy@verizon.net>
Living in Syracuse, NY -- USA
Growing in Zone 5b, Latitude 42.3° N.
Whitney Point, NY -- USA

Grow bigger heads of hardneck or softneck garlic by

a strategy in which only selected, heavier cloves
are given more luxurious plant spacing. Plus, a way
to check if such an effort really helped, and, if
so, by how much.

Bigger Seed = Bigger Heads

Most garlic farmers already know that -- all else under the sun being equal
-- bigger seed makes bigger heads. And bigger heads tend to offer bigger
cloves (and more of them per head) from which to choose the biggest as seed
to sow into the next season. And most garlic farmers can wrap their heads
around the idea that more luxurious spacing -- more luxurious for the garlic,
that is -- makes bigger heads. (Up to some remote point of absurdly wide
spacing, where every garlic plant would be getting every speck of sun, water,
and nutrients it could possibly make use of.)

But, beyond that, the growers' consensus starts to unravel. It starts to

become more a question of worldview. Some are committed to Metric 1, a
blunt, textbook measure of getting the maximum yield in total poundage for

1 -- The Obsessive Quest…

the space allotted. Others are interested, instead, with the alternate idea
of Metric 2 -- getting the biggest practical weight or size per head for
every seed piece sown, mulched, weeded, de-scaped, harvested, cured, and
generally sweated over.

Generally, word on the street has it that you can indeed grow bigger heads by
giving the garlic more room to grow, but your total yield for the amount of
worked ground will suffer. Some people don't like that, whereas others are
willing to entertain the idea, up to some unknown point. The clash in
perspectives may flow from differences in growers' feedback loops or markets.

Larger-scale commercial garlic growers -- certainly those who grow for

dehydration into garlic powder or garlic salt -- might be compensated by the
pound and calibrate their labor and expenses by the acre. All pounds and
acres being generally equal, Metric 1 makes sense, and most agricultural and
scholarly attention worldwide stays focused on pounds per acre, or kilograms
per hectare, or something like that.

Smaller-scale, boutique, or hobby growers of garlic might also be compensated

by the pound, at least in part. But they often discover at market that
pounds made out of big heads strangely turn out to be worth more money, per
pound, than pounds made out of medium or smaller heads. (I know -- right?)
Some of this may be driven by demand from seed buyers, causing a premium to
be placed on the price of bigger heads. And some price pressure may be
caused by consumers who are simply more impressed by The Big Stuff, or by
amateur chefs who have come to detest the kitchen labors involved in peeling
lots of small cloves.

Also, back to compensation: Since the work of a hobbyist is basically the

hobby -- a place where profit and loss can lapse into vague notions -- big
heads can be a big part of propping up this sort of grower’s personal and
psychological (not to say, pathological) sense of satisfaction.

Folks susceptible to these kinds of influences are at risk of obsessing over

Metric 2, rather than Metric 1, and bigger heads take their place beside
similar quests involving big fish from the river, big scores at the flea
market, and tracking down the Holy Grail. I confess I've started down that
second path, and it might be too late to turn back now.

But here's my question: Is it actually true that more luxurious spacing of

seed garlic (measured in a more fine-tuned way, by taking into consideration
the all-important influence of the original seed size) gets you an acceptably
bigger weight increase across the board? At what point in the range of
allotting more room to some or all of your garlic does a marked improvement
strike some kind of sweet spot, then give way to returns that are somewhat
better but maybe not worth all the extra trouble?

2 -- The Obsessive Quest…

Some Prior Record-Keeping

For the last couple growing seasons, I went to the trouble of counting and
weighing the total of most of our seed, variety by variety, just before fall
sowing. Then -- soon after mid-summer harvest, but before everything
scattered hither and thon for market -- I also counted and weighed the total
of the associated heads, variety by variety, somewhat fresh, partly cured,
dirt mostly off, and de-stemmed. (Yes, the logistics of doing this can be
challenging.) As a consequence, I got familiar with a mathematical measure
of success that could be termed "multiple increase," "percentage gain,"
"weight gain," "X increase," or "times heavier." As in, "Such and such a
variety increased nine times (9X) from seed weight to fresh harvested head
weight, whereas this other variety only went 6X." Variety by variety, you
calculate the average weight each for surviving fresh harvested heads, then
divide by the average weight each for all the seed pieces that originally
went into the ground nine months earlier for every group. Note that this
dodges the pitfalls of looser math, where you just track the total poundage
before and after, because it takes into account that some variable portion of
each group died at any number of junctures on route (though, of course,
that's also a useful stat to keep track of).

Beforehand, I don't think I thought much about what kind of “X” increase
garlic should be good for. Garlic is peculiar among backyard garden
foodstuffs, because it's one of those few plants typically grown from seed
pieces that store a proportionately large amount of energy in basically un-
improvable cloned flesh. It's not typically grown from sexually reproduced
true seed, like peas or corn, which store proportionately less energy per
seed and are therefore capable of a hundredfold increase (especially after
the influence of hundreds of years of humans selecting the best).

Some online seed garlic mongers seem to advise buyers to figure on harvesting
only about five times (5X) the weight of the seed they buy and sow -- as in,
"Buy and sow a pound of seed this fall, and, easy-peasy, next summer you’ll
get back 5 pounds of fresh garlic." Just based on the physiology of garlic,
where one clove tends to become a head of 5 to 10 or 12 or sometimes even
more cloves, that 5X seems a little low to me. Possibly the 5X statistic has
been throttled downward by an unholy desire to sell more seed, or by a
reasonable wish to make advance arrangements for buyers' harvests to exceed
expectations. Or maybe seed garlic sellers have learned from experience that
very few of their gardening enthusiast customers are going to do all the work
that’s necessary to get their garlic growing up closer to its potential.

3 -- The Obsessive Quest…

As a result of all my weighing and record-keeping, for the harvest that came
in for 2017, I was able to make a scatter plot showing our X increase for 17
or so varieties, plotted against the average starting seed weight in pounds
per. Here it is above. We can maybe discern a trend where fatter seed, to
the right, drops downward in a diminishing return on the multiple increase or
X side, which stands to reason. In other words, yeah, bigger seed makes
bigger garlic, but at some point the proportional weight gain drops off.

“True” Planting Density

My next question was to wonder what kind of "true" plant spacing or planting
density we were putting these garlics through. And whether there was room
for improvement. Because we have for years habitually sown all our garlic in
a consistent, approximately eye-balled grid (so many rows in a certain width
of bed, separated by so many inches between rows, and so many inches between
plants within rows), our customarily calibrated planting density would wind
up seemingly the same for everything: So many plants per bed foot or square
foot, and so forth. But that's not really the best measure for each garlic
plant's winter-spring-and-summer experience of true density. If it's all the
same space per plant, then smaller, lighter seed pieces tend to grow out
skimpier plants that experience life a bit more unencumbered by the
neighbors, and bigger, heavier seed pieces tend to grow out beefier plants
that experience life a bit more hemmed in.

What's needed is a revised measure of planting density that takes into

account the original seed weight. There's lots of ways to phrase this, but I
settled on keeping track of square feet of bed space, not counting alleys,
per 1 pound of seed. A bigger number represents more luxurious spacing for
the garlic, and a smaller number represents tighter spacing. Alleys, or
aisles, refer to the adjoining unplanted paths between beds that are
necessary for humans or machinery to work through the garlic patch without
trampling the future merchandise. There will always be a question of whether

4 -- The Obsessive Quest…

to include this edge space (or half this space from each side of the bed),
but I've elected to consistently leave it out.

Rating and comparing "true" planting density as square feet allocated -- of

bed space, not counting alleys -- to one pound of seed is helpful because
context matters. In the case of garlic, the average seed size or weight per
piece is a good, practical, predictive, surrogate measure for the context of
how much above-ground space each resulting plant is likely to occupy during
spring and early summer. Putting just one large seed piece in the center of
every square foot of bed space is not truly the same treatment as doing the
same for every small seed piece. So incorporating original seed weight into
our numbers makes for fairer comparisons.

For our 2017 harvest, here's a scatter plot above showing our X increase for
17 or so varieties plotted against the refined planting density for each.
Again, we can maybe discern a trend where more luxurious spacing gauged at
the mathematical average (more square feet per pound of seed), to the right,
seems associated with higher multiple increases on the X side, but perhaps
only up to a point.

All this can lead to more questions -- assuming the grower has gotten
interested in growing bigger heads, and assuming extra space is available (or
it'd be acceptable to drop the total sow count somewhat on the same room).
Is there a theoretical overall ideal planting density for all garlic (or a
set of customized ideals for each variety)? If so, can math even show you
the sweet spot? Or does that sweet spot ultimately depend on how carried
away a grower is willing to get, slavishly provisioning garlic with more and
more space?

5 -- The Obsessive Quest…

Let's Look at Some Numbers

It’s clear that these sorts of optimistic X increase multiples can, of

course, be dragged down by mis-acclimated garlic varieties, partly shaded
grow sites, under-amended soils, weeds gone wild, pests run amok, bad
weather, and so on. From year to year and from patch to patch, my mileage
will vary, and so will yours, in other words.

But that still means -- after garlic gardeners do the best they can every
year, working against those limits -- pretty much the only thing left to work
on further is planting density, especially if this is calibrated by reference
to the original seed weight.

Based on a couple years of having run these kinds of numbers for our main
crop garlic, I’d wager that the range of practical and semi-practical
planting densities for seed garlic, and the range of likely resulting weight
gains, would run something like this:

• A Pretty Luxurious Spacing Scheme would be somewhere around 60 square feet

of bed space to 1 pound of starting seed. Under this kind of relaxed spatial
treatment, and with other conditions being hunky-dory for the year, I assume
the range of weight gain multiples might be as impressive as 10X to 15X.

• Somewhat Luxurious Spacing might mean devoting 48 square feet of bed to 1

pound of seed, which might lead to weight gain multiples ranging a bit less,
like 9X to 14X.

• A Middle of the Road Plan could involve allotting 36 square feet to the
seed pound, generating respectable weight gains from 7X to 12X.

• A Somewhat Tight Layout might be, like, 24 square feet, leading to 5X to

10X.

• And a Pretty Tight Operation would probably be all the way down to 12
square feet to 1 pound of seed, gaining the grower only a somewhat paltry 3X
to 8X in weight put on from seed to harvest.

6 -- The Obsessive Quest…

Hindsight

I didn't take a close look at this kind of speculative math until after we
finished sowing a somewhat-heavier-than-before supply of seed garlic for Fall
2017, which we accomplished according to our traditional grid system, none
the wiser. Afterwards, I landed on a temporary guideline that any group’s
average planting density falling between about 30 and 48 square feet of bed
space per 1 pound of seed should be about right for our main crop purposes.
Then -- looking back at what we already sowed, which was on average about
1/3rd bigger by weight per piece than the supply we had the year before -- it
turns out that we might have done a better job by sorting out and separately
planting, with more room, at least some of the heavier seed from some of our
better-performing varieties. Based just on averages, it was clear we were
inevitably putting some cloves into the ground more tightly than 30 square
feet of bed space to the seed pound.

The simplest way to fix this for the future would be to choose some ballpark
cutoff in pounds or grams per seed piece, and then sort pieces from certain
heavyset varieties into two piles -- heavier cloves and regular cloves. We
wouldn’t have to go through this rigmarole for everything -- just for those
varieties that clock in as heavy enough per average piece to warrant the
extra attention. For our particular bed layouts, some math showed that our
cutoff should be around 0.016 pounds and up per seed piece, which translates
to 7.3 grams per. That was derived using the temporary guideline of planting
as little seed as practical more densely than about 30 square feet to the
seed pound. Next year, to help sort seed, a gram kitchen scale will be
necessary to rule on close calls; otherwise, once you get the gist of it,
most cloves can be sorted by eye and by feel.

I imagine the extra room for heavier cloves could still be laid out so as to
fit within the same width of bed as we’ve ever used, so I'm not proposing
that anybody get into the pickle of going back and forth, constantly re-
customizing markers or machinery, to make it happen. Instead, it'll just be
a matter of handing out yardsticks or tape measures to the planting crew and
remembering to install each bifurcated variety's bigger seed, 4 rows to the
bed, either just before or just after handling the rest on 5 rows, right in
line down the same bed. It could still be just one grouping labeled with one
stake. Next are some sketches, based on our particular bed widths, which
show what I’m talking about.

7 -- The Obsessive Quest…

Here’s a picture above of the layout I propose for our bigger seed.

And here’s a picture above of something closer to the layout we have been
typically using, and which we will continue to use with regularly weighted
seed pieces.

8 -- The Obsessive Quest…

Big Garlic Dreams

The table below lays out the range of expected weight gain increases, showing
what might be possible for various starting seed weights in terms of the
resulting head weights. Those shadings in medium purple, dark green, and
medium green concentrated to the upper right side represent a compulsive
grower's big garlic dreams.

We can see -- to have much of a chance at fulfilling those big garlic dreams
-- bigger seed is pretty necessary, as expected. I'd say generally 7 grams
per and heavier. But a grower could also selectively bless this bigger seed
with the introduction of a loophole to the Law of Diminishing Returns -- by
arranging for more relaxed spacing. That may be the best way to hold onto,
or even possibly slightly goose, whatever natural X increase is in the offing
each year, in other words.

It also looks like smaller seed, stuff between about 4 and 7 grams, would
require consistently terrific weight gains to get where we wish it would go,
at least in just one year.

9 -- The Obsessive Quest…

The range of calculated planting density numbers in the right-hand columns
suggests that growing 10-gram or 8-gram seed in a more spacious way can
actually be about the same treatment as growing 6-gram or 5-gram seed with
more traditional spacing.

This alternate way of looking at planting density warrants an explanation.

Even with a fixed layout, gauging square feet of bed space devoted to one
pound of seed is inherently an average, because each group’s seed weights are
averaged. In the real world, there’s actually a range of garlic weights
being submitted to a particular spacing treatment. And the spacing treatment
is only crudely summarized, near the mid-point, by the overall average
planting density for the group.

You can also turn it around and ask what the calculated planting density
would be for each component weight class of seed -- as if that weight class
was grown out on its own, separately from the others, according to whatever
spatial treatment is in question. The exercise can show where seed at the
heavier end of the range appears to start “suffering” under a particular
treatment, and also dragging down the group’s average planting density
number. If heavier cloves are promoted to a separate, more spacious, sowing
treatment, then that re-sets the averaging of bed space square footage to the
seed pound. Both the average and the calculated numbers for the new, heavier
group can be seen to wind up at a more appropriate spot or range, because
spacing has been relaxed. The lighter remainders now form their own group,
and the average planting density seems to jump back toward a more appropriate
spot -- not because spacing has been changed, because it hasn’t -- but solely
because the heavier seed pieces have been taken out of the mix.

Could the real-world performance of average or smaller or skinnier seed -- on

the same, traditional bed spacing -- improve slightly, simply by having
arranged separate quarters for heavier seed that's otherwise likely to grow
out larger, neighboring plants? Or is this just a trick of math?

A Proposed Test
Here’s a scheme that’s designed to check what sort of weight gain
improvements might be in the offing, in exchange for the logistical cost of
coping with sorting seed and separate sowing, and the spatial cost of giving
some heavier seed garlic more running room.

For Fall 2018, I propose to zero in on four or so varieties that rank --

using overall average seed piece weights -- just below, smack on, a bit
above, and further above, our temporary cutoff of 0.016 pounds (7.3 grams)
per seed piece. For reasons that will become clear, I’m willing to go Full
Monty on the testing only for varieties that have at least 160 seed pieces
total, but not way more numerous than that (such as 400, or 500, or beyond;
if so, we’ll comb through a hopefully randomly selected portion).

The key thing is we’re going to want to split each variety into two halves,
using as the cutoff each group’s median seed piece weight, not the average,

10 -- The Obsessive Quest…

and not 7.3 grams per. That has the effect of making sure each test will be
a fair proposition against a 50-50 control.

Admittedly, gradually sorting each test variety lighter and heavier -- and
thus finding the median -- does sound like a loathsome chore. At first, many
cloves will be visually sortable -- smallest in a leftmost pile, biggest to
the right -- with each pile kept to an even count. At the end -- facing a
center pile of remainders that all fall somewhere near the middle weight --
that’s when we’ll need patience, organizational skills, and guidance from a
gram scale. Hopefully, we’ll get it down to one last group, every piece of
which clocked in at what now turns out to be the median weight, accurate down
to one-tenth of a gram, which will probably be the limit of what we can do.
These last few will get split between lighter and heavier in such a way that
the piece numbers in each end pile stay even, and so there you go.

Taking an average piece weight for each variety’s lighter and heavier halves
will guide us in drawing clove samples, and swapping them back and forth, so
that the average piece weight for each test group matches what’s intended.
That’s not the same as perfectly reflecting the distribution of the range of
weights in each half, but I say it’s close enough for our purposes.

For each variety, we’re going to select enough cloves to make two groups
lighter, and four groups heavier, so six groups total. That’s why we want to
choose from varieties that offered at least 160 seed pieces total, so we’d be
able to find at least 80 seed pieces to represent the heavier half, four
times over at 20 seed pieces per. The number 20 was chosen so that each test
group is evenly divisible by either 5 or 4, which represent our choices of
row treatments. Bigger sample sizes -- any multiple of 20 -- could be
desirable, but it’ll mean more work.

Any leftovers can just be grown out somewhere else, same as it ever was,
without all the statistics. Or -- since we already went to all the trouble
to sort each test variety’s collection into lighter and heavier halves --
these can be put in as extras within two of the test groups described below,
without throwing off the math (but, yes, requiring more space). In a sense,
this would be like doubling-down on the bet, just in case the testing shows
the whole scheme actually worked as hoped.

11 -- The Obsessive Quest…

For the control groups -- which wind up growing out mixed -- we’ll sow on a
traditionally spaced 5-row bed, alternately choosing cloves from supplies
still segregated and marked in the field as lighter and heavier. This will
be a seemingly roundabout way of mimicking how we’ve always sown garlic in
the past, but this time preserving our ability to find out, in the end, what
really happened with the plants spawned by lighter and heavier seed. We want
to make sure each of the two sizes is distributed so that each grows on edge
rows -- where an alley is a neighbor -- 40 percent of the time. Even
trickier, we want to make sure we can figure out which was which at harvest.
To accomplish both -- without littering the field with markers -- every other
clove sown is lighter, placed so that lighter occupies rows 1, 3, and 5 in

12 -- The Obsessive Quest…

the first rung (closest to the label for the overall block), then occupies
rows 2 and 4 in the second rung, and so on. Unobtrusive backup methods of
marking the pattern of where control lighter seed pieces were placed could
also be used. At harvest, the job will be to find all the plants grown mixed
from control lighter seed pieces and pull those first, then move on to the
control heavier, etc.

Moving on to the test groupings -- which wind up as segregated sowing -- the

remaining, second group of lighter seed pieces will be sown seemingly in the
same way as above, 5 rows to the bed, but isolated from presumably larger
neighboring plants. (This is also the place where any leftover lighter seed
pieces can be thrown in, pushing the numbers beyond 20. If we don’t want to
weigh and count the survivors from more than the first 20, that seems okay to
me for backyard science.)

And then, the ultimate test, the remaining, three groups of heavier seed
pieces will be sown in progressively more spacious ways on 4 rows to the bed.
First, there’s the same 10” by 13” grid as was laid out above; then 12” by
13”; and then 16” by 13”. (The 10” by 13” grid is the more space-conscious
spot to gamble by throwing in any leftover heavier seed pieces. Again,
that’ll push the numbers beyond 20, but we could limit the chore of weighing
and counting survivors by just doing the first 20, if desired.)

For the more interesting seed garlic pieces falling within the heavier range
of weight -- say, 0.016 to 0.024 pounds each -- the more spacious sowings can
be said to have the effect of “moving” the range of calculated planting
densities. What would have been down as tight as 29 to 19 square feet of bed
space to the seed pound -- if sown altogether back on 5 rows, using an 8” by
10” grid -- slides all the way up toward luxury represented by 46 to 30, then
55 to 37, and then 73 to 49 square feet of bed space to the seed pound,
respectively. So this would seem to cover the waterfront widely enough to
give us a chance to see if the range of X increases theorized as possible
under my density descriptions of Middle of the Road (36), Somewhat Luxurious
(48), and Pretty Luxurious (60) has any basis in reality. The overall
spatial cost of trying for such improvements -- in the case of more
luxuriously growing only the heavier half of each group -- turns out to be,
respectively, 28, 44, and 75 percent more bed space. The cost of the space-
expansion program comes in twice higher -- respectively, 56, 88, and 150
percent more bed space -- if you use as the preferred baseline just that half
of the original room taken up by the heavier half.

At harvest, we could weigh and count survivors from each of the sample groups
right away -- pretty fresh, dirt mostly hosed off, and whole, with the stems
still on -- just to get an early picture of what may have happened over the
prior nine months. To zero in on the true end goal, average fresh head
weights, we’ll have to come back later at a consistent time, find all curing
in labeled groupings, then weigh after de-stemming -- but before they are
scattered for future on-farm seed, or seed sales, or food sales.

I assume we should wind up with an X increase for control lighter --

traditionally grown on 5 rows, but mixed with control heavier -- that is

13 -- The Obsessive Quest…

slightly exceeded by a bigger X increase for test lighter, also traditionally
grown on 5 rows, but in isolation from presumably larger neighboring plants.
The X increase for control heavier -- traditionally grown on 5 rows, but
mixed with control lighter -- should be much more noticeably exceeded by the
X increases for each of the test heaviers, more luxuriously grown on their
own across 4 rows.

But how much further exceeded for all that extra space, that is the question.

We want to know the impact on harvest weights from this scheme of sorting and
separately sowing lighter and heavier seed pieces -- at least for the range
of test varieties split 50-50 at their mid-point weights, during the season
of testing. In the end, we should be able to say that -- controlling for
what we would have gotten anyway, if we did nothing differently -- each
treatment leads to such and such a percent heavier head weights.

Down the road, we could choose to sort any variety's seed at any weight
cutoff desired, changing the proportional breakdown between heavier and
lighter seed pieces away from the 50-50 breakdown which we consistently
imposed upon our tests. In those cases, our mileage will undoubtedly vary,
sometimes better, sometimes worse. For the typical bed layouts used on our
farm, we are currently of the unproven belief that the weight gain advantages
of such a sort are likely to be most pronounced for any variety averaging
0.016 pounds per seed piece or heavier, using 0.016 pounds or 7.3 grams as
the cutoff for each piece chosen. Variety groupings averaging one, two, or
several steps heavier than 7.3 grams per could be sorted by using 7.3 grams
as the cutoff, not the group median, and not the group average, in which case
the breakdown will vary from the 50-50 setup that we tested, with usually
more than 50% of the seed supply ranking as heavier and calling for more
space.

Unless we are confusing ourselves, that should mean both the benefits in
terms of percentage weight gain, and the costs in terms of additional space,
would be increased from what we found, based on 50-50 testing.

And In The End…

Of course, in the end, it turns out it’s not possible for the math alone to
decide whether the extra work and extra space would be worth spending -- in
exchange for bigger heads of garlic -- by any individual grower, making seed-
spacing choices for any number of garlic types, variously weighted.

But the math could help.

I’m assuming that most garlic farmers do as we have traditionally done, and
stick with a set pattern of sowage across all beds and all rows -- for all
main crop seed, no matter how fat. But if we actually measure our planting
density as square feet devoted to a pound of seed, rather than square feet
devoted to every single seed piece, a one-size-fits-all sowing scheme may no
longer seem the best way to go. By testing more relaxed spacing schemes for

14 -- The Obsessive Quest…

select groups of heavier seed pieces, we might discover the status quo was
cheating our fatter seed out of an extra 1X or 2X or more in gained weight.
(Or possibly we learn we were giving our skinnier seed more room than
necessary). To make any use of these results, we’d have to be willing to
find a convenient way, down the road, to routinely split at least some of our
seed supply into at least two groupings by size or weight. And then we'd
have to be willing to customize a more relaxed planting scheme for the fatter
seed pieces -- if extra open ground can be lined up.

Some Formulas

1 ÷ Average seed piece weight in decimalized pounds = Number of seed pieces

per 1 pound.

(Number of seed pieces per 1 pound ÷ Number of plants per bed foot) x Width of
beds in feet = Square feet of bed space per 1 pound seed.

15 -- The Obsessive Quest…