Have you noticed how expensive garlic is to buy? And yet, garlic is simple to grow. Knowing when and how to plant garlic will help you produce your own garlic for a fraction of the price of buying it. And your own garlic will likely taste better than what you’d buy at the grocery store.
Here are the steps I follow to plant, grow, and harvest garlic. And some things I’ve learned along the way, too.
Choosing Your Seed Garlic
Look for seed garlic at your local garden store or buy from a nearby gardener.
Preparing To Plant Garlic
Separate your garlic bulbs into cloves. Leave the skins on the cloves. One clove will grow to be one bulb, so choose how many garlic bulbs you wish to harvest and plant that number of cloves. If you have extra garlic bulbs, plant the larger cloves. Larger cloves will produce larger bulbs.
Choosing A Location And Preparing Your Soil
Grow garlic in soil that has good drainage. Raised beds are typically a good option because they help with drainage and warmth. The best soil for planting garlic is well-drained, loose soil that has full sun.
Remove weeds, rocks, stones, and any other objects from the planting area.
Six weeks before your first frost date, prepare your soil. We add aged chicken manure, compost, and a handful of bone meal to each of our garlic beds. Dig it into the top 6 inches and rake it so it’s level.
If you can, grow garlic near beets, broccoli, celery, lettuce, potatoes, strawberries, and tomatoes.
Don’t grow garlic next to peas and beans.
Planting Garlic
When To Plant Garlic
Planting garlic before the ground freezes is important not only so you can dig the soil. Garlic likes a cold period before growing, too.
Sometimes where we live, we get an early frost, and then the temperatures climb. When this happens, we just wait until the ground thaws so we can dig the soil again. That’s typically only 2 or 3 days. My husband and I typically plant garlic in mid or late October. During milder winters, we can plant in November.
How To Plant Garlic
Plant the cloves with the pointy side of the cloves facing upwards, and space the cloves 5” or 6” apart, 3” deep, and in rows 5” or 6” inches apart.
Label the rows with the name of the garlic variety, and the date you planted the garlic. Consider writing this in a garden journal, too.
Keep the soil moist but not waterlogged. Mulch your garlic bed to help retain moisture. Where I live, I don’t have to water our garlic until March or April, after our winter rains have stopped.
Growing Garlic
Garlic needs a long time to grow and develop — anywhere from 8 to 10 months.You might notice your garlic sprouting during the winter. Don’t panic! The garlic tops are hardy. Instead, enjoy the sight of the new growth. Spring is around the corner.
How To Fertilize Your Garlic
In spring, right after your last frost date, remove the mulch and add a couple inches of compost.
In the late spring, add another couple inches of compost. I do this in May.
When To Water Your Garlic
Garlic likes consistent water while growing. A lack of water can contribute to smaller bulb sizes. But your cloves can also rot if you water it too much.
After planting, we don’t water our garlic beds again until spring because it typically rains enough in the fall and winter. If you don’t get enough rain, poke your finger in the soil to see if it’s dry. If it’s dry, give it a sprinkle of water.
Stop watering about 2 weeks before harvest time. I usually stop watering in early July. To know when it’s time to harvest, see below.
Remember To Weed Your Garlic
Keep weeds out of your garlic bed. To help keep weeds away and moisture in, mulch the soil. You can use untreated wood chips, hay, leaves, or straw as mulch.
How To Cut Garlic Scapes
As soon as garlic scapes appear, cut them off as far down the stalk as you can.
Removing the scapes forces the plants to put their energy into growing bigger bulbs rather than growing scapes.
If you don’t compost your scapes, try making garlic scape pesto or garlic scape powder.
Harvesting Garlic
After a long wait and some care, harvesting your garlic is something worth celebrating.
When To Harvest Garlic
It’s time to harvest your garlic when the tops turn yellow. I wait until the first 5 leaves of the garlic leaves have turned yellow (about half of them). The picture below shows our garlic when it was ready to harvest.
We plant Red Russian garlic in October and the bulbs are usually ready to harvest in the middle of July. Depending on the variety of garlic you’re growing, and when you planted it, it might be ready a bit sooner or later.
Before deciding if it’s time to harvest, I pull one garlic bulb up. If it’s still a bit small, I leave the rest of the garlic to continue growing for another 2 or 3 weeks.
How To Harvest Garlic
Don’t just pull on the tops. Use a hand shovel or fork to loosen the soil, being careful not to stab the garlic. Gently pull on the stalk and push up with the shovel or fork at the same time. Using a shovel or fork helps to support the bulbs as you pull them out of the ground.
Keep the stalk attached to the bulb. After you harvest each bulb, gently shake off most of the soil that’s attached to the roots.
You can eat your garlic right away, but you need to dry the bulbs that you want to store.
After you harvest all your garlic, throw in about 4 inches of compost, and plant something that you can harvest in the fall—like broccoli or Brussels sprouts.
Experimenting
Try different garlic varieties to find the flavour that you like. If you have a friend who grows a different variety, trade some of your garlic for some of your friend’s garlic. Or, teach a friend how to plant, grow, and harvest garlic.
Planting and growing processes can be a bit different if you’re growing a different variety of the same vegetable. So, if the information here differs from the instructions on your seed packets or packages, always follow what your seed packets or packages tell you.
