The Influence of Selected Agronomic Practices on the Yield and Chemical Composition of Winter Garlic

The studies were carried out in 2002-2005 on evaluation of covers application (a perforated film with 100 holes·m^-2 and polypropylene non-woven) as well as the influence of different plant density (250, 125, 83 and 63 plants·m^-2) on the yield and chemical composition of winter garlic cv. Arkus for bunch-harvest.

Covering the plants with perforated film and polypropylene non-woven increased the marketable yield by 30.7% in comparison to open field cultivation. Moreover, the covers had a favourable effect on the weight and leaf length as well as on plant weight and bulb diameter. The plants grown under covers showed significantly higher dry weight content in bulbs, total sugars in leaves, but simultaneously less amount of L-ascorbic acid. The increase of plant density from 63 to 250 per m² caused a significant increase of marketable yield. However, the plants grown at the highest density had the lowest weight and their edible parts had the least amount of total sugar and L-ascorbic acid.