Garlic is one of the most labour-intensive vegetable crops. Hand-separating heads, laying out cloves in rows and harvesting can absorb most of the production costs. That is why it pays to view garlic growing not as a single machine, but as a technological chain — and each link of it can be mechanised. The Spanish company Broch has built the whole chain: from clove preparation to post-harvest lines.
**Step 1. Clove preparation — splitter and grader.** We plant individual cloves, not whole bulbs, so the first step is to break the bulb apart and sort the cloves by size. This is done by the LIDE splitter: a peeling belt gently separates the bulb, brushes remove skins and roots, and a classifier sorts the cloves into 4–5 grades. Calibration is not a formality — the planter doses evenly only when the clove diameter matches the gripper. According to the manufacturer, separating the bulbs and sorting the cloves is the “first step towards even and uniform planting”. In addition, damaged cloves, which would be an entry point for infection, are rejected on the inspection table.
**Step 2. Planting — mechanically or pneumatically.** Broch offers two systems. The PLMA mechanical planter doses cloves with a disc carrying 14 spoon-type grippers, selected for the calibre of the material; the density is adjusted from 6 to 15 cloves per metre by a simple change of gear, and each section has its own seed hopper, so different grades can be planted at the same time. The PLNA pneumatic planter combines pneumatic singulation (a disc picks up a single clove) with mechanical distribution — according to the manufacturer, this is the best combination for planting bulb crops, especially large fractions, and it maintains precision at working speed. Planting depth is adjustable from a few millimetres to 20 cm.
**Step 3. Harvesting — with tops or with topping.** Here the choice depends on the storage technology. The ARAT harvester lifts garlic with the whole top and ties it into bunches, laid out in windrows — the tops remain for traditional curing (cure), and the heads are protected by the green stalk. The ARCO harvester takes a different route: a serrated disc knife cuts the tops at a set height, and the heads themselves go by a bar conveyor into a collection bag — a solution for harvesting with a small crew, when the tops are not needed for curing.
**Step 4. After harvest — cleaning, grading, peeling.** Harvested garlic goes onto a post-harvest line: cleaning of soil and skins, grading of the heads (mechanically on screens or electronically, weighing each piece) and packing. A separate link is the LPL garlic peeler, which peels the cloves “dry” with compressed air — without water, with an efficiency of up to 98% — turning lower-grade raw material into a finished, peeled product as well.
**And onions?** The same pneumatic planting system works beyond garlic: the PLNA planter also plants onions, spring onions and potato microtubers. This matters for vegetable farms that want to use one machine for several crops from the group of vegetables.
Mechanising the whole chain — from clove calibration to the peeled head — removes garlic growing's greatest burden: manual labour. The choice of specific machines (number of rows, capacity, harvesting technology) depends on the scale of the plantation and the storage method — we will help you determine it for your field.