Last Updated on November 27, 2021 by Guillermina
Growing garlic indoors hydroponically? You have come to the right place. Today on the blog, we will share with you some tips on growing garlic hydroponics.
Surprisingly, it is very easy to plant garlic indoors without even using a pot of soil. The process for doing this involves a glass container and a little bit of water. It is a perfect way to grow garlic greens all year round. In any case, when growing garlic indoors, you need to know about the garlic greens and the bulb. You also need to know the various varieties so you will have better yields.
What are exactly garlic greens, exactly? Also known as baby garlic or garlic greens, these are the shoots that appear from garlic cloves before their bulbs form. They are similar to garlic chives but they bear similarity to scallions or green onions.
Types Of Garlic To Grow Indoors
There are three primary garlic varieties you can decide to develop at home. If you want to develop garlic greens, you should choose the softneck variety. Conversely, the hardneck variety is best for garlic scapes.
Softneck: Softneck assortments like Silverskin are great for storage (the delicate stems that give them their name are not difficult to mesh together when relieving). Some examples of the softneck varieties are Korean Red, Duganski, German Red, and Spanish Roja.
Hardneck: Hardneck garlic can be distinguished by its single ring of cloves and its milder character profile, while soft neck garlic in all likelihood incorporates the garlic bulbs at the supermarket, highlighting numerous layers of cloves. Moreover, it has a more grounded, all the more customarily garlicky taste.
Elephant: Great-headed garlic, otherwise called elephant garlic, isn’t regularly one of the suggested assortments for planters. Elephant garlic tastes nearer to other alliums like leeks, without a very remarkable punchy garlic flavor.
Step By Step Guide On Growing Garlic Indoors Hydroponically
If you want to grow garlic hydroponically, you need to know the proper techniques for the best results.
The advantage of growing garlic indoors hydroponically is that you don’t need to stress over various factors like soil type, climate conditions, mulch, weeds, or pests. All you need is a garlic clove, a glass of water, and some daylight.
Sprouting a garlic clove. Buy a garlic bulb from your nearby rancher’s market or supermarket and eliminate at least one individual clove (try to keep the cloves inside their papery white skin). Growing garlic is a straightforward process: Just enclose your cloves with a soggy paper towel and spot them in a warm area. After around two days, your cloves should start to grow.
Spot the grew clove in a glass compartment. You need the sharp grown end confronting vertically. A shot glass is an ideal size for a singular clove. For a very long time, a drinking glass or container functions admirably.
Fill a compartment with water. The water level should cover somewhat less than half of the garlic sprout. The room temperature water is great.
Put the pot on a bright windowsill. Guarantee that the area you pick gets eight to 12 hours of daylight each day. On the off chance that the highest points of your growing garlic cloves begin to shrink, they might be getting an excess of light, and you should eliminate your compartment from the windowsill for one to two days.
Replenish the water intermittently. In case the water turns an overcast shade of brown, spill out the filthy water and renew it with a similar measure of clean water.
Growing Garlic Indoors Hydroponically And Lighting Requirements
Sprouting garlic in water may not be as hard as you think.
However, when it comes to lighting it might help to invest in an artificial lighting system. The garlic bulb gets that stimulates the cloves of garlic to develop into a bulb. Without an adequate amount of light, you can’t expect your clove to increase in size.
Ideally, garlic grown hydroponically should receive 14-16 hours of strong artificial lighting a day. The amount of strong light will help the bulb to develop faster. Garlic with enough light will also be larger than ordinary ones.
Ideally, when it is important for garlic to have plenty of artificial lighting. It is just as important that garlic rest under full darkness for part of each day. This process is known as photoperiodism where the plant strives to develop or shoot up during the darkness in anticipation of the light again.
The following are some examples of artificial lighting that you can invest in when growing garlic indoors:
- HID (high intensity discharge) lighting
- LED (light-emitting diode) lighting
- Fluorescent lighting
- Metal halide (MH) lighting
- High-pressure sodium (HPS) lighting
Garlic Hydroponics And Fertilizer
The best fertilizers for cloves of garlic that are groin hydroponically are water-soluble. When you are growing herbs or vegetables in water, it is not going as much as nutrition as it can when planted on soil. You can purchase hydroponic fertilizers, which will add nutrients to the water reservoir of your hydroponic system.
Once it is diluted into the water, the plants will have access to the nutrients in the fertilizer. When hydroponic fertilizer is applied this way, it will replenish the nutrients that the soul is ough to give.
Even though it is a soil-less system, your plant can still thrive. Together with nutrients, you may also need a soil-less substrate. A garlic bulb will not develop properly unless you put a plant improver.
When growing garlic indoors hydroponically, the substrate also helps keep the garlic’s root system from drying. The following are some substrates that you can add to your hydroponic system in order for your garlic to thrive.
- Coconut fiber. Coconut fiber is a great hydroponic substrate that helps retain water. But for sustained growth, it is best used in combination with another airier substrate called perlite.
- Rockwool. Rockwool is a result after rocks are superheated together with chalk. The end result is tiny fibers that create porous lightweight matter.
- Perlite. Perlite is commonly used for succulents but because of its volcanic minerals, it becomes advantageous for garlic. You can simply submerge a handful of perlites in your hydroponic system.
Growing garlic indoors hydroponically can be quite fun. It helps you harvest garlic from your own abode. This way, you can save a lot of trips to the grocery store.