Built in Dundalk, Ontario · Shipped worldwide
Garlic planters for growers who count culls
Two people ride it and plant 1,200 to 1,600 cloves an hour, root end down every single time. The Velocity PL-22 is a tractor-mounted garlic planter designed by a garlic grower, built one at a time in our own shop, and running on farms across Canada, the United States, Europe and Australia.
PL-22 garlic planter
- Planting rate
- 1,200–1,600cloves / hour
- Riders
- 2600–800 each / hr
- Hitch
- CAT 1three-point
- Building since
- 2015as Garlic-EEZ
The equipment
Two machines, one season
A planter for October and an undercutter for July. The undercutter mounts to the planter frame in place of the wheels, so it is an attachment rather than a second implement.
PL-22
PL-22 Garlic Planter
Semi-automatic ride-on garlic planter. Two riders, 600–800 cloves each per hour, every clove root-down.
- Hitch
- Category 1 three-point hitch, standard
- Planting rate
- 1,200–1,600 cloves per hour with two riders
- Assembled dimensions
- 96" L × 48" W × 40" H
UC-36
UC-36 Garlic Undercutter
Tractor-mounted undercutter with a 36-inch blade. Lifts the bed at harvest so bulbs pull clean by hand.
- Blade width
- 36 inches
- Mounting
- Fits the PL-22 planter frame
- Weight
- Approximately 100 lb
UC-48
UC-48 Garlic Undercutter
Tractor-mounted undercutter with a 48-inch blade. Covers wider beds in a single pass.
- Blade width
- 48 inches
- Mounting
- Fits the PL-22 planter frame
- Weight
- Approximately 100 lb
Why it is built this way
Hand-planting garlic is the most expensive day of your year
Every fall the same math plays out. A crew on their knees, a bucket of cloves, and a hard ceiling of about 1,000 cloves per person per hour on a good day. At six inches by six inches you are placing roughly 174,000 cloves per acre.
The alternative most growers look at is a fully automated cup or belt planter. Those move fast, but they drop cloves in whatever orientation they land in. Upside-down and sideways cloves produce bent necks, undersized bulbs, and culls you pay to grade out ten months later.
The PL-22 carries your crew instead. They sit, the tractor pulls, and the planter opens the furrow, meters the spacing and closes the row. The one job we leave to a human is the one humans are still better at: setting the clove root-down. A machine that guesses is not faster than a machine that is right the first time.
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Accurate placement
Every clove goes in root-down at your chosen spacing. No double-drops, no skips, no re-planting a row you already paid for.
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A rate that holds
Two riders at 600–800 cloves each per hour. Seated operators sustain their pace through the afternoon; kneeling ones don’t.
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Built to be modified
Row count, row spacing and wheel configuration are set up for your beds and your tractor before the machine ships.
From the field
See it work
We love our garlic planter/harvester and it has made a laborious task fun and manageable for a very small team.
Running one already? We still support machines built under the Garlic-EEZ name.
Worth reading first
Before you spend the money
- When to plant garlic in Ontario: a fall timeline Roughly two to four weeks before the ground freezes — mid-October to early November across most of the province. Here is the whole season, week by week. Read it →
- Planting onion sets with a garlic planter Sets and cloves are the same problem: a small bulb, root plate down, at a spacing. We make a dedicated onion wheel. Seed and transplants are a different machine entirely. Read it →
- Planting tulips, hops and ginseng with a garlic planter A garlic planter is really a bulb, rhizome and large-seed planter. Six confirmed crops beyond garlic — plus the honest note that garlic is what it is optimised for. Read it →
You may know us as
Garlic-EEZ
Velocity Farm Equipment builds the machines that were sold under the Garlic-EEZ name. Doug Gilbert designed and fabricated those planters and undercutters, and in early 2022 he took the operation over under a new name. Same shop, same Dundalk address, same machines — refined every season since.
If you read about Garlic-EEZ in Fruit & Vegetable Magazine or The Grower, or you have been running one of the early units since 2016, you are in the right place. Parts, service and advice are all still here.
Tell us about your beds
Get a quote
Send us your row spacing, bed width, tractor horsepower and how many acres you plant. We will tell you exactly how we would configure a machine for you — and if we are not the right fit, we will say so.