Growing Gourmet Garlic, Part 4: Bulb Cracking and Clove Selection

Reader Contribution by Andrea Cross
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Photo by Pixabay/adrianogadini

Once your spoil is prepared (Growing Gourmet Garlic: Planting Part 3 – When to Plant and Soil Preparation) choose a likely day for planting, and crack your bulbs accordingly. Bulbs of gourmet garlic should not be broken apart (or “cracked”) until one or two days before planting. We crack ours on the day of planting whenever possible. Cloves begin to deteriorate once separated from the root plate, so leaving the bulbs whole until the last minute keeps the cloves in optimal condition.

Bulbs can be separated mechanically or by hand. At Calling Quail, we crack thousands of pounds of garlic each fall. To make the process more efficient, we have a dedicated “cracking” machine, composed of two large adjustable rollers that gently squeeze the bulbs apart. This process does not separate each individual clove, but it does break the bulbs into halves and quarters. The remaining pieces are then cracked by hand.

Softneck cultivars are cracked with relative ease. They possess multiple rows of cloves and lack the central stem of hardneck varieties, both of which aid the cracking process. To crack a softneck cultivar, hold the bulb in one hand while applying gentle downward pressure with the thumb of your other hand to the outer layers of skin. Once the skin has been removed, the exposed outer layer of cloves are easily removed from the rest of the bulb. Repeat this process on the inner layers of cloves until all have been separated.

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