Garlic from the Garden in Five Easy Steps

Don't you love it when a plan comes together? Here's a picture of the first harvest of garlic from our Kitchen garden in the Way Back. It's a variety called Early Italian that I purchased online last year from Burpee.

I must admit I tried growing garlic in our garden a couple of years ago, but that crop didn't make, for one reason or another. Those reasons all revolve around "I didn't really know what I was doing." If at first you don't succeed, read the directions and try again...which is just what I did last Fall.

Here are the Five Easy Steps to Growing Great Garlic in your Home Garden:

1. Plant garlic at the right time for your location. Here in USDA Zone 7 in the Piedmont of North Carolina, we plant garlic in the Fall for a late-Spring, early-Summer harvest. In Northern climates, garlic is planted in the Spring for a Summer harvest. Purchase non-treated garlic from a garden center, farm supply, or catalog source; while you may get grocery store garlic to sprout, it isn't reliable since non-organic, grocery garlic has been treated to prevent just that. 

Our experience: I ordered three varieties online from Burpee (Early Italian, Late Italian, and Viola Francese) about this time last year, and they were then shipped to me later for planting on September 8. The good news is that after you purchase your first "starter" bulbs, you can use their offspring to plant your next crop, etc. 

2. Plant garlic cloves (the individual "toes" of the garlic bulb) in well-draining soil that has been enriched with compost and in full sun, picking a spot in your garden that you don't mind relinquishing for the next 9-10 months. You can also plant garlic in fabric "grow bags" if you are reluctant to dedicate that much real estate to just one crop for so long. Plant the cloves with the pointed side up, 1" deep and 4" apart in rows 12-24" apart. 

Our experience: I planted two rows and one grow bag (using a mixture of top soil and compost for the growing medium in the bag). The tops of our Fall-planted garlic emerged in a couple of weeks and stayed green all through our mild Winter weather. I did take the precaution when a heavy frost was expected to mulch the tender greens with straw for protection. 

3. Garlic is fairly fuss-free: keep it weeded and watered (about 1" of water every week of its growing season until the weeks prior to harvest), and feed it in the Spring. Mulching will help maintain the moisture levels and inhibit weed growth. 

Our experience: A topping of compost in the early Spring and a once-monthly feeding with diluted fish emulsion were the only "extras" this crop received. 

4. You may notice that some garlic varieties produce flower stalks which have small bulges called bulbils. Garlic bulbils are the small bulbs that develop in the garlic scape if you leave it on the plant.

     Curly-cue garlic scape, showing the bulbil-bulge

Garlic scapes are often called garlic flowers, although scapes aren’t true flowers – the reproductive parts only partially form and they are not viable. The bulbils that form are clones of the mother plant...essentially mini-bulbs that will grow to be large bulbs if they are treated like normal garlic cloves. Cut these stalks off to ensure that all of the food the plant produces will go into making the garlic bulb and not the clusters of bulbils, unless you wish to dry the individual bulbils for planting. In June, the garlic plants stop producing new leaves and begin to form bulbs underground. Now is the time to remove any remaining mulch and stop watering. The garlic will store better if you allow the soil around the bulbs to dry out prior to harvesting.

Our experience: I snipped all the scapes this year, with one exception. I have saved several bulbils from that active stalk to dry and plant this Fall...just to see how they will grow. I also began to loosen the (hard-packed, clay) soil around the forming bulbs in the garlic row, to make it easier to harvest when that time came.

5. Harvest your garlic when the foliage yellows and begins to die back. Pick a day when no rain is in the forecast for 24 hours. Dig the bulbs out gently, using a hand-held garden fork, and then allow them to dry in the sun for the rest of the day. Cure them in a flat basket or on screens in a protected, dry place for a week or two. Cut tops off 1-2" above garlic bulbs, or braid the tops together into garlic strings for hanging. Store loose bulbs in a dry, cool, airy place in baskets; be sure to check your garlic often for any sign of mold or greening of the cloves.

Our experience: As you can see from the picture at the top, I put the newly-dug Early Italian garlic bulbs on black landscape fabric to dry in the sun. Then I gathered them into a newspaper-lined flat basket to finish curing in the garage, on top of the chest freezer...a cool, dimly lit spot. I hope to braid them for keeping through the next year. I plan to use the largest of each variety as my "seed" cloves for this Fall's crop. I will warn you about one thing, if you decide to store your garlic in an area you use on a daily basis: every time I go in the garage where the smell of garlic is so strong, I have an overwhelming urge to "cook something Italian for supper!"

Happy hoeing!