Growing Your Own Garlic

Garlic is a staple in most kitchens. It's common to purchase garlic from the supermarket, but it's fairly easy to grow at home. Here are some tips to help you grow garlic in your own garden.

Soil Tips for Garlic

Garlic likes full sun but it can handle a little shade. Garlic also prefers a slightly acidic well-drained soil with plenty of organic matter. If your soil has poor drainage, be sure to add compost and sand. Raised beds work well for garlic.

Garlic likes moist but not overly-wet soil that tends to rot the parchment around the cloves and bulb and invites fungus. Also, garlic doesn't compete well with weeds or do well in extreme cold or heat. A weed-free quick-drying mulch works nicely for garlic. I prefer straw as mulch because it's easy to remove.

Planting Tips for Garlic

Tradition says to plant garlic on the shortest day of the year. But the best practice is to plant shortly after the first frost. Right before planting, break a bulb into individual cloves--cloves can dry out if separated too soon before planting. Each individual clove is a seed and becomes a bulb of more than a dozen cloves.

Choose the fattest cloves and plant them pointed-end up with root down, about 4-6 inches apart and about 4-6 inches deep. Be sure to leave enough room around each clove for it to bulb. Keep the soil loose and rock-free, so the bulbs can spread out. If you do happen to plant your cloves upside-down, the garlic will still grow, but the shoot will make a weird curve, and the bulb may be strangely shaped.

When you plant garlic in the fall, you want at least a month for cloves to develop root structure before resting for the winter. You don't want the cloves to send up shoots until the soil warms in the spring. Cold climates from September to November can freeze the soil and work the garlic right out of the ground. Using a mulch cover helps for this, but the mulch needs to be pulled away in the spring to help the soil warm.

Garlic grows well with other vegetables and can even protect other plants from pests. So plant your best and fattest garlic cloves in your vegetable garden in the fall, and watch them come up alongside your vegetables. Remember to plant garlic in a new spot every year to discourage disease.

You can also plant garlic in the spring, but the bulbs may be smaller and some may not clove well--especially if bulbs became too warm in storage before planting. Some gardeners refrigerate their cloves a few weeks before spring planting to resemble dormancy.

Go ahead and plant the little cloves in bunches in the spring. They grow shoots and can be eaten much like spring onions. Garlic and onions are in the same family. But don't plant supermarket garlic; you probably won't get anything out of it. It's often chemically treated to prevent sprouting.

Tending Tips for Garlic

Fish fertilizer is a my favorite fertilizer to use in the early spring. It builds foliage. I don't fertilize when bulbs comes on, because I don't want energy to go into the leaves.

Many gardeners cut the flowers stalks off to get a better yield. Other gardeners feel the garlic is better left alone for flavor. It's really up to you. I tend to believe it's better removed.

Water about an inch per week but not more than a couple inches. Watering amounts really depend upon the drainage capacity of your soil. A week or two before harvest, begin to let the soil dry out. Dry soil makes it easier to pull up the garlic bulbs, and the garlic stores better too.

Harvesting Tips for Garlic

Watch the leaves for signs of when to harvest. When leaves turn brown and there is just a little green left, it's time to harvest. Don't go too long, or the bulbs will begin to split open and start the growth cycle. They will send out new shoots and become hard to get out of the ground. If you harvest too soon, the bulbs will be smaller and have a stronger flavor. If you like this about garlic, go ahead and harvest early.

To harvest, put the shovel under the bulb and gently pry up from underneath. You don't want to bruise the garlic. The shovel only loosens up the dirt and lifts. By hand, you pull the garlic up and out of the soil. Place it carefully to the side as you move on to the next bulb.

Curing Tips for Garlic

Cure your garlic bulbs by drying them to allow excess moisture to evaporate. Curing is best accomplished in a dark, cool, and low-humid storage place in order to keep back fungi and keep the bulbs from sprouting. If not dried properly, garlic rots.

You can braid the stalks when they are still pliable and hang your garlic for curing. After about a month, when the garlic is dry, some gardeners brush off the soil, peel some of the parchment back, and cut off the roots to make the bulbs look better. But your bulbs will be fine in cold storage if you do nothing more.

This year, why not consider growing your own garlic? Garlic is garden-friendly and takes little effort. Once you find out how easy it is to grow your own, you'll decide to add garlic to your garden every year.