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Vitamin spring greens are always welcome on the dining table. Not so long ago, great popularity began to use wild garlic - a delicate lettuce with garlic flavor and aroma. To replenish the stores of vitamins, diversify the diet and update the range of useful greenery in the garden, you need to know how to grow wild garlic.
What is the ramson?
This is a perennial bulbous plant, which is part of the same family with garlic and onions. A plant with an early growing season. Her greens make their way through the snow and cold earth already in early April. The bulbs of the plant are small, in diameter from 1 to 2 cm, depending on the variety. The height of the plant varies from 15 to 40 cm.
The wild garlic is appreciated for tasty greens with a light garlic flavor. In young leaves, a record high amount of ascorbic acid, as well as amino acids and bioflavonoids. After studying the composition and useful properties of the plant, its wild thickets began to disappear rapidly due to active harvesting together with bulbs. Today, wild garlic is listed in the Red Book of many countries.
So what is caramel and where does it grow? Bear's onion is the second name of the ramson. It occurs in the European part of Russia, in Byelorussia, in Western Europe. It grows in deciduous and mixed forests, lowlands, near swamps, along river banks. Loves moisture and penumbra, so in coniferous forests almost never occurs. In the food is a young greens, bulimos of onions and flower arrows, which are pickled and brewed.
Greens are added to salads, sauces, arrows are used as a snack. When picking wild garlic in natural conditions, do it as early as possible in April-May, as the leaves become stiff and blooming in flavor and aroma by the flowering period.
How does the wild garlic, varieties
In natural conditions, bear onions multiply by bulbs and seeds that mature in August. A few years from 5-6 bulbs develops a whole field of wild garlic. Aggressive harvest of greens strongly weakens bulbs, which degenerate after 2-3 years.
To preserve the natural glades of this plant, the leaves are collected selectively, cutting with scissors 1-2 from one plant. Bulbs do not touch. Similarly come and grow greenery in the suburban area.
How to grow wild garlic in the garden? To do this, use both bulbs and seeds. In the first case, you can get greens in a year, in the second - in 2-3 years. When buying seeds pay attention to the timing. Seeds of wild garlic lose their germination after a year. There are 2 species of wild garlic and several varieties. Kinds:
- The victorious onion is a large plant up to 70 cm tall, the rhizome of which consists of several bulbs. Leaves are wide lanceolate, garlic to taste and aroma. Flowers smell of honey, they are decorative;
- Onions bear is a plant up to 40 cm tall with thin leaves, like a lily of the valley, the inflorescences are white fragrant, the greens are tender and juicy. It is listed in the Red Book.
Sweet cherry or cultivated cabbage is represented by three varieties: Bear cub, Bear ear and Bear delicacy. They differ in size of leaves and yield. The most productive is the Bear's ear, which gives up to, kg of greenery with 1 m2. It is grown whole plantations in the open ground and greenhouses.
Planting bulbs
How to breed wild garlic in a summer residence quickly and effortlessly? For this approach, planting bulbs. Sometimes greens in the market or in the garden centers are sold entirely with young onions. Such a plant can be brought home, cut off some of the greenery and plant the bulbs in properly prepared soil. To do this, in the suburban area choose a place under the crown of a large tree, near the western wall of the farm building or near the fence, where direct sunlight does not reach.
The soil is prepared as follows:
- mix 1 part peat with 2 parts turf ground;
- add foliar humus, which can be collected in the forest;
- add ash and vermiculite if the soil is heavy.
Before planting, the site is excavated, the weeds are removed, the ground is filled with prepared soil. It is better to do this from autumn. How to plant the wild garlic bulbs in the open ground? Bulbs are planted in grooves to a depth of 10 cm. The distance between the planting material is 15-20 cm. Watering plantings every day for a week for rooting. To preserve the moisture of the soil, mulch the overgrown foliage. The best time for planting bulbs is the beginning of May.
Stratification
How to grow wild leek from seeds? In natural conditions, seeds acquire germination only after winter stratification. Without it, friendly and high-quality shoots will not work. In artificial conditions, stratification is carried out in a refrigerator or on a glassed-in loggia where the air temperature does not fall below -3 ° C.
Stratification of wild garlic seeds at home - stages:
- soak seeds in warm water for 1 hour;
- heat the river sand in the oven;
- fill the sand in a shallow container;
- to sow seeds, not deepening the soil and not moisturizing;
- cover with lid or polyethylene, put in a cool place (refrigerator) for 3 months.
Periodically, the container is removed from the refrigerator and checked to ensure that there is no mold and fungus. After 3 months, the seeds are prepared for planting. Of course, the cultivation of wild garlic from bulbs is a simpler process, but a lot of planting material is obtained from seeds.
Seed sowing
Cultivation of the bear's ear of wild leek seed presupposes the planting of young bulbs in the open ground only after a year, and the receipt of greenery after another 2 years. After stratification, the seeds are placed in trays with moistened soil and sprinkled with peat on top with a layer of 1 cm. Capacity put in a warm, dark room, on top covered with polyethylene. Seedlings will appear in 3-4 weeks. These are thin hairs that should be dived in 2-3 weeks.
The plant will need almost a year to form an onion. All this time, pots with wild garlic are kept at home or in a greenhouse, regularly watered and fertilized with complex fertilizers.
How to plant wild garlic in spring? In May, after increasing the average daily air temperature, the matured shoots are planted in grooves, the distance between them is 50-60 cm. The current and next seasons of the bulb abundantly watered and fed, giving rise to a green mass and root system. The greens are not cut off.
If there is no shady place on the site, and the site itself is high, wild garlic is grown in greenhouses, where high humidity is maintained and plants are protected from the bright sun. In such conditions, juicy greens are obtained from March to October. Planting and caring for wild garlic in greenhouse conditions does not differ from that produced when growing a plant in the open ground. Main watering, weed removal and regular top dressing.
Care of the plant in the country
Cultivation of wild garlic at the dacha is a laborious process only in the first 2 years. The most important thing is to create conditions for the plant to form a full-blown bulb. If the plant for 3 years will give a good growth of greenery and release a flower arrow - it means everything is done correctly and you can prepare all the future seasons for vitamin products.
If the soil is heavy, the groundwater is close to the surface, the plantings are regularly loosened to increase the aeration. Regularly remove weeds, especially wheatgrass, which damages the soft young onions of wild garlic. Watering plantations as the soil dries. The bow does not like stagnant moisture.
Early in the spring organic matter is introduced into the soil. This is a dumped manure or nitrogen fertilizer. Later the plant needs phosphorus and potassium to develop the flower stem and form seeds. These elements increase the frost resistance of garden crops, so you can make them at the end of summer.
The time for picking the wild garlic for greens lasts from April to May, and the shadier the place of growth, the more juicy and tasty the greens. In the sun and in the heat, the wild garlic shrinks, the leaves coarsen. Bulbs for edible purposes are harvested in August after harvesting the seeds.
Sowing without stratification
If a small plantation of wild garlic has already formed at the dacha, you can update the planting with freshly harvested seeds without artificial stratification. It means the planting of wild garlic for the winter in the open ground.
Plant seeds are harvested in August and left to be stored in a cool place until October. From autumn they prepare a plot for sowing, remove weeds, loosen them, bring humus. In mid-October, when the air temperature rapidly decreases, the seeds scatter on the surface prepared plot, lightly embed from the soil into rakes, and from above sprinkle dry foliage collected on site.
After natural stratification, young shoots appear in the spring. As a rule, shoots are not always friendly due to unstable weather conditions. Home stratification gives the best result; therefore, for the laying of the first bed or plantation, the wild garlic is grown from seed by seedlings.
How to grow wild garlic on a windowsill
For the production of spicy, juicy greens, year-round wild cherry is grown on the windowsill. To do this, select the north window, which does not get bright sun rays. The pot is chosen with a diameter of 40 cm, the depth is also about 30-40 cm, so that the bulbs can give a powerful root system and develop a thick bush.
The soil for the pot is taken in the deciduous forest - light, nutritious, air-permeable. In one pot plant 10-15 bulbs. It is better to transfer the plant from the forest in the early spring, when the greens only begin to break through the soil and snow or late autumn, when the wild garrison has faded. But in the fall to find bulbs in the forest is difficult, you need to know the exact place of growth of bear onions.
How to grow wild leek all year round at home? In the first year after planting, the plant is not disturbed by cuttings. Bulbs should be strengthened and thoroughly rooted. Do not allow the soil to dry out and bright sunlight. In winter, a pot of wild garlic is put in a cool place away from batteries, so that the greens will not dry out. You can put on a table in the back of the room.
In addition to watering, once a month they feed wild garlic with complex mineral fertilizers for salad greens. It is better to use liquid top dressing. Each year the plant develops one additional bulb, so after 3 years the pot is changed to a larger diameter or a spicy glade is placed in two containers.
From a pot of wild garlic can be transplanted into a garden or a greenhouse in the period from spring to autumn.
If the seeds of the plant are not needed, and the arrows do not go into food, the peduncles are cut off, so that all the nutrients go to the development of new leaves and bulbs, and not the formation of fruits. If cherries like the care and microclimate in the room, it will provide the family with vitamin greens all year round.
Bear cub is unique in its composition and useful properties, so they try to prepare greens for future use in a variety of ways. It's freezing, marinating, souring, boiling, salting. In Europe, in honor of the plant, there are whole festivals where people are introduced to the growing of plants and treated with dishes prepared from it. That's the kind she is - valuable savage!
