How does garlic grow? Here is a concise primer on how to start growing garlic that covers varieties, when to plant, pest prevention, and harvesting and storage.
The last crop to go into the garden, garlic is planted in fall and harvested the following summer. Flavorful, nutritious, and helpful for warding off vampires, garlic also is easy to grow as long as you plant varieties suited to your climate. Fertile, well-drained soils with a near-neutral pH between 6.5 and 7.0 are best for growing garlic.
Softneck Garlic (Allium sativum sativum)
- Description. Large bulbs comprised of 12 to 20 cloves, with the largest ones on the outside of the bulbs. Large, vigorous plants grow best in mild winter areas. Most grocery store garlic is softneck garlic. Flavor is generally mild, with more spiciness in some Asian strains. Will keep for eight months under cool, dry conditions.
- Types. Creole types such as ‘Burgundy’ taste great and store well, even in the humid South. In the West, try late-maturing ‘Susanville’ or other California-bred varieties. ‘Red Toch’ is remarkably tasty and cold-hardy.
Hardneck Garlic (Allium sativum ophioscorodon)
- Description. Medium to large bulbs comprised of six to 12 symmetrical cloves around a hard central stalk. Cold-hardy plants produce delicious edible scapes. Plants that are allowed to flower may produce bulbils. Often sold in gourmet shops, hardneck garlic has a complex, spicy-sweet flavor. Storage time ranges from three to eight months.
- Types. Often called porcelain or continental strains, ‘German White’ and ‘Music’ produce tender scapes and six or more big, juicy cloves. Big-flavor rocamboles such as ‘Chesnok Red’ and ‘Spanish Roja’ excel in cold winter climates.
Elephant or Buffalo Garlic (Allium ampeloprasum)
- Description. Large, upright plants with strappy leaves need wide, 12-inch spacing. Baseball-size bulbs comprised of four to six cloves have mild flavor, which makes them great for roasting. To increase bulb size, harvest the edible scapes or use blossom clusters as cut flowers.
- Types. Seed is sold simply as elephant garlic, or you can start with a store-bought bulb. In areas where elephant garlic grows wild, feral seedlings moved to the garden will form bulbs in two years.
How to Start Growing Garlic
In fall, plant cloves in well-drained beds after the first frost has passed and the soil is cool. Cloves can also be planted in late winter as soon as the soil thaws, but fall-planted garlic produces bigger, better bulbs.
Choose a sunny site, and loosen the planting bed to at least 12 inches deep. Thoroughly mix in a 1-inch layer of mature compost. In acidic soil, also mix in a light dusting of wood ashes. Wait until just before planting to break bulbs into cloves. Poke the cloves into the ground 4 inches deep and 6 to 8 inches apart, with their pointed ends up. Cover the planted area with 3 to 5 inches of organic mulch, such as hay or shredded leaves.
Harvesting and Storing Garlic
From early summer to midsummer, watch plants closely and harvest when the soil is dry and about one-third of the leaves appear pale and withered. Use a digging fork to loosen the soil before pulling the plants. Handle the newly pulled bulbs delicately to avoid bruising them. Lay the whole plants out to dry in a warm, airy spot that is protected from rain and direct sun. After a week or so, brush off soil from the bulbs with your hands, and use pruning shears to clip roots to half an inch long. Wait another week before clipping off the stems of hardneck varieties or trimming and braiding softnecks into clusters. Do not remove the papery outer wrappers, as these inhibit sprouting and protect the cloves from rotting.
Storage life varies with variety and with growing and storage conditions. When kept at 50 to 60 degrees Fahrenheit, rocamboles store about four months, other hardneck garlic varieties usually last six months, and softneck and elephant garlic store for eight months or more. Hang your cured crop in mesh bags, or braid softneck types and suspend from rafters in a cool, dry basement or garage.
Saving Garlic Bulbs for Planting
Many garlic varieties fine-tune their growth patterns to the climate in which they are grown, so planting cloves from bulbs you grew yourself can save money and also result in a strain that is especially well-suited to the conditions in your garden.
As you harvest and cure your crop, set aside the biggest and best bulbs as your “seed” stock. One pound of cured bulbs will break into about 50 individual cloves, which is enough to plant a 25-foot-long double row.
If allowed to flower, some varieties produce fleshy bulbils (little bulbs) atop the flower stalk. Elephant garlic often develops elliptical, hard-shelled corms underground outside the main bulbs. Garlic bulbils and corms can both be replanted. The first year after planting, bulbils and corms will grow into small plants that can be harvested as scallion-like “green garlic” in late spring, just before the roots swell. If left unharvested, bulbils and corms develop into full-size bulbs in two to three years.
Garlic Pest and Disease Prevention Tips
- Onion Thrips Tiny onion thrips rasp pale grooves into garlic leaves, but they have many natural predators. Keep areas near garlic and onions mowed to reduce the weedy habitat thrips prefer. Monitor populations with sticky traps, and use a spinosad-based biological pesticide to control serious infestations.
- Onion Root Maggots Onion root maggots seldom infect garlic planted in soil where onion family crops have not been planted for two years, but the mobile adults may still lay eggs around the base of young plants. Where pest pressure is severe, dust the area around plants with diatomaceous earth in late spring, which is when the egg-laying females are most active.
- Fusarium and Root Rot Prevent fusarium and other soilborne root rot diseases by growing garlic in well-drained, fertile soil. Avoid injuring the roots when weeding, because diseases often enter plants through broken tissue.
Garlic Growing Tips
- Experiment with types and varieties, because each reacts differently to weather and rainfall patterns. A spring hot spell that bothers one variety may benefit another.
- To grow garlic greens for cooking, plant whole bulbs 12 inches apart in the fall. In spring, when the greens are 10 inches tall, grab them with one hand, and use your other hand to lop them off with a knife. You should get two more cuttings before the plants give out.
- You can make garlic powder by drying thinly sliced garlic at 150 degrees until it’s crisp. Grind to a powder in a food grinder or blender.
Cooking with Garlic
Without a doubt, garlic works culinary miracles when added to food. The pungency of raw garlic varies depending on the variety, and all types of garlic mellow when cooked. In addition to tossing chopped garlic into soups, stews, and stir-fries, try baking whole bulbs with a little salt and olive oil, and then spreading the soft, creamy flesh on warm bread. If you grow hardneck types of garlic, be sure to harvest the curled scapes that appear in early summer. Scapes can be eaten fresh, or blanched and frozen. Garlic can also be fermented as a whole-clove pickle. Check out this trial of nine varieties to try pickling garlic at home.
(For details on growing many other vegetables and fruits, visit our Crop at a Glance collection page.)
Contributing editor Barbara Pleasant gardens in southwest Virginia, where she grows vegetables, herbs, fruits, flowers and a few lucky chickens.
