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Garlic is one of the easiest crops you can grow. In most regions of the country, garlic is planted in the fall, about 4-6 weeks before the ground freezes. By that time, many summer crops have already been harvested, leaving some free garden space. Just remember that the garlic bed won't be available for another type of crop until late next summer, when it's time to harvest the garlic you planted the previous fall.
Pick a Variety (or two...)
If you're replanting garlic from your own stock, choose the biggest and best heads from the summer's harvest. Simply put, the larger the planted clove, the larger the harvested head. If purchasing, look for garlic sold specifically for planting. Garlic from the produce section at the supermarket may have been treated with a sprout inhibitor to prevent it from growing.
There are several types of garlic.
Hardneck garlic varieties produce a stiff stem that grows up through the center of the bulb. Compared to softneck varieties, then tend to have a sharper flavor, with more variation in flavor among the varieties. They're hardier, too, making them a good choice for regions with very cold winters. Once harvested, the bulbs have a somewhat shorter shelf life than softneck varieties.
Popular hardneck varieties: "Music", "German Red", "Chesnok Red"
Softneck garlic varieties don't produce a stiff central stem. This list the type of garlic you'll find at most supermarkets. It has a relatively mild flavor. Softneck garlic is the best choice for regions with mild winters, and it's the type to grow if you want to make garlic braids.
Popular softneck varieties: "Inchelium Red", "California Whiite Early"
Elephant garlic resembles a giant head of garlic and, indeed, it does belong to the same genus, Allium. However, it isn't a "true" garlic but rather is more closely related to the leek.
Planting Garlic
- Plan to plant garlic in fall about four to six weeks before the ground freezes.
- Prepare the soil by loosening it to a depth of at least 8" and mix in some slow-release, granular organic fertilizer.
- Just prior to planting, break up the garlic heads into individual cloves, leaving as much of the papery covering on each clove intact as possible.
- Plant cloves 3" to 4" deep, orienting them so the pointy ends face up.
- Water gently to settle the soil, and then cover the bed with a 4" to 6" layer of straw. Even as air temperatures drop, the soil will stay warm enough for the newly planted cloves to establish roots before the ground freezes.
Sometimes you'll see some green shoots form in fall; that's fine and won't harm plants. They'll begin growing in earnest in spring.
Here in Vermont it's easy to tell when the garlic should be planted. Look up at the hillsides. If they're a blaze of red, orange and yellow, it's time.
If you planted hardneck varieties, they'll probably form curly scapes. It's best to cut these off so the plants will direct their energy to producing large underground bulbs. The tender stalks can be used in stir-fries or sauteed with vegetables.
Last updated: 10/18/2022
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The Complete Guide to Growing Garlic | Easy Instructions
Garlic is an easy-to-grow crop that requires little to no care, and if you set aside a head or two from each harvest for planting the next season, you’ll never have to buy garlic again.
Garlic is in the Allium genus, which also includes onions, shallots, leeks, scallions, chives and ornamental Alliums.
Because garlic grows throughout the winter, it is a great crop for keeping your garden in production year-round. Also, heads of garlic can last for a long time when properly cured and stored, so they can be used in the kitchen and enjoyed for months longer than many other vegetables from the garden.
Garlic is planted in the fall and overwinters until harvest time in early summer. (photo: Amy Prentice)
Squirrels and other mammals hate the taste and smell of garlic and will leave your garlic plantings alone — and may even avoid nearby vegetables as well.
Rather than trying to grow garlic from garlic seeds (or, more accurately, garlic bulbils) it is much easier and much more practical to grow garlic from cloves, a process that I will explain below.
But before getting into how to grow, harvest and cure garlic, it’s important to know how to select the garlic varieties that will perform best in your garden.
Garlic is one crop that the squirrels and other four-legged mammals won’t touch since they hate the taste and smell. (photo: Amy Prentice)
Choosing Between Softneck and Hardneck Garlic
Softneck and hardneck varieties of garlic are so named because of their stalks. While softneck garlic has pliable stalks that can be braided for storage and an attractive display, hardneck garlic stalks are woody, stiff and not suitable for braiding. But the differences don’t end there.
Softneck garlic is better suited to southern climates while cold-hardy hardneck garlic fares better in northern climates.
And even though a softneck variety may be rated for USDA hardiness zones 7-10, that doesn’t mean that it will perform well in the northernmost reaches of zone 7. This is because day-length is another consideration when growing alliums.
While softneck garlic (Allium sativum sativum) usually has all-white bulbs, hardneck garlic (Allium sativum ophioscorodon) is more likely to have hues of pink and purple.
Hardneck garlic is also known to have more intense flavor than softneck varieties.
Softneck garlic varieties like the one shown here usually have all-white bulbs and cloves, and the stalk is absent from the center of the bulb. (photo: Amy Prentice)
After the stalks have been cut off, it is a bit harder to tell softneck and hardneck garlic heads apart. But once you break apart a head, you’ll notice that a hardneck variety has the base of the stalk running through it while the stalk is absent from a softneck garlic head.
Hardneck garlic varieties are easy to identify once you start to remove cloves. The base of the stalk runs through the bulb. (photo: Amy Prentice)
Hardneck garlic cloves have the benefit of being easier to peel, and hardneck heads are typically bigger than softneck heads. Even though softneck garlic tends to have more cloves per head than hardneck garlic, softneck garlic cloves are smaller.
Softneck garlic lasts longer in storage than hardneck.
Including the curing period (more on curing later) softneck can last for six months or even longer, while hardneck typically lasts from three to four months.
Hardneck garlic also grows a flower stem called a scape — and garlic scapes are like a bonus crop. In spring, the curly garlic stem will bloom into a flower if left to grow, but this is not what’s best for your garlic.
Instead of the plant putting that energy into flowering and setting seed (or bulbils, in the case of garlic) it’s better to cut the scape off so that energy goes into producing a larger head.
And that fresh scape is a delicious treat that you can enjoy many weeks before the garlic head is ready to cook with.
You can mince garlic scapes to make pesto, grill them, saute them, mix them in with stir-fry — or even use them in soup. And garlic scapes can be a substitute for green onions in almost any recipe that calls for them. The texture is like asparagus, and the flavor is mild yet unmistakably garlic.
Scapes are a delicious bonus crop that you get when you grow hard neck garlic. Scapes can be used in a variety of recipes or preserved. (photo: Amy Prentice)
Most varieties of hardneck garlic fall into one of three categories: Rocambole, porcelain and purple stripe, but there is even more diversity than that, including Creole and Asiatic.
Most softneck garlic varieties fall under the artichoke or silverskin categories.
Meanwhile, elephant garlic, which is particularly large, is a different species altogether and can be grown successfully in the North or South. Rather than Allium sativum, elephant garlic is Allium ampeloprasum, the same species as leeks and pearl onions.
How to Source Garlic
Garlic heads intended to be separated into individual cloves for planting are referred to as “seed garlic.”
The garlic that you find at your local grocery store is almost always from China or California and, though it depends on where you live, there is a good chance it is not suited to grow in your region.
While you can experiment with growing grocery store garlic, there are surer paths to successfully growing garlic.
To find garlic suited to your region, first look to your local farmers and growers. A farmers market or farm stand that carries locally grown garlic is a great source for seed garlic that will produce well where you live.
You can also try to find fellow gardeners willing to share a head of garlic with you from a variety that they have been saving and regrowing with great results year after year.
You can also order seed garlic from a seed catalog or an online seed vendor. Just be conscious of whether the garlic variety you are ordering is softneck or hardneck.
Seed garlic from reputable vendors should be free of pests and pathogens, but wherever you source garlic from, always check before planting for signs of damage or disease. A damaged garlic clove will not thrive and may rot before it produces a bulb. Diseased garlic will not only die, it will introduce pathogens to the garden bed and the viable garlic you have planted.
Seed garlic can be purchased from a seed vendor or your local farmer’s market. (photo: Amy Prentice)
When and How to Plant Garlic
October is the most popular month to plant garlic, but depending on where you live, you could plant sooner or later.
In the North, late September or October are the best times to plant garlic cloves. It should be done at least two weeks before the first frost of the season, and must be done before the ground freezes.
In the South, October is an ideal time but you could wait until November, December or even January. However, it’s best to err on the side of planting early than late.
Garlic can be grown either in-ground or in a raised garden bed. Either way, garlic will grow best and produce the biggest heads when planted in soil that drains readily and is rich in organic matter.
But do not add fertilizer at planting time, as it may stimulate vigorous growth early on that will be damaged when winter weather sets in.
If you wish to fertilize, knowing the nutrient makeup of your soil first is always a good place to start. A soil test will provide that information.
While the natural inclination may be to add nutrients that are best suited for bulb growth and development (phosphorus), this nutrient is often already present in the soil at sufficient levels. In such cases, adding more doesn’t help.
Nitrogen, on the other hand, is a nutrient that is utilized quickly and does not persist in the soil as phosphorus does. Nitrogen is an important nutrient for garlic, especially in spring for foliage health, which is the main lifeline to bulb development below ground.
In spring, side-dress with a nitrogen-based fertilizer, such as blood meal, soybean meal or cottonseed meal, composted chicken manure, or another slow-release nitrogen source. Lightly work the fertilizer just into the surface so the soil microbes can get to work making the nutrients available to the garlic.
Alternatively, you could try a blended organic fertilizer mix specifically developed for garlic.
Fruition Seeds Company offers such a product that they claim to have perfected over the years to emphasize bulb development in the fall and foliage growth in spring. It consists of alfalfa meal, kelp meal, feather meal and compost crumbles.
Wait until planting time to break up a head of garlic and separate the cloves. This is best done by pulling the head apart with your fingers, taking care not to damage individual cloves. Leave the “paper” on the cloves, and reject any cloves that have holes in them or other signs of damage. Choose the biggest cloves to plant, as they will produce the biggest heads.
Set aside the largest and healthiest garlic cloves each year to grow and repeat the cycle season after season. (photo: Amy Prentice)
Cloves should always be planted with the pointed side up and the root-end down, just like when planting flower bulbs.
When planting cloves, make sure to place the flat end down and the pointy end up. (photo: Amy Prentice)
Take a trowel and dig parallel furrows 2 inches deep and 1 foot apart.
Space garlic cloves in the furrows 4 inches apart and cover them with soil so the surface is level once again, and then water in.
If you are working in an irregularly shaped space, don’t worry about creating neat furrows. Instead, while being conscious of the spacing requirements between cloves, make 2-inch-deep holes with your fingers in any pattern you choose.
Leave the “paper” on the cloves and plant in furrows, like this, or plant in any pattern as long as the cloves are spaced property. (photo: Amy Prentice)
Either immediately upon planting or soon before frost is expected, protect the garlic with a generous application of mulch.
Loose straw makes for a great, fluffy, insulating mulch, should be applied in a 6-inch layer. Alternatively, 4 inches of shredded leaves are just as effective. In warmer climates where the ground doesn’t freeze, all that’s needed is 2 inches of organic mulch to block weeds and retain moisture.
A layer of loose straw is a great mulch option for garlic.
(photo: Amy Prentice)
Do not plant garlic in a spot where garlic, onions or another member of the allium family has been grown in recent years. Changing up where garlic is grown (an example of crop rotation) is important for avoiding allium pests and diseases.
When planting, take note of the days-to-maturity of the variety, if known. Days-to-maturity is not exact, but it will give you an idea of when to look for signs that the garlic is ready to be pulled up.
When to Water Garlic
To achieve optimal bulb formation and reduce plant stress, avoid overwatering or underwatering garlic plants. Too little water can stress plants, and too much water can cause bulb rot.
In soil with ideal drainage, garlic requires between a half-inch and one inch of water per week. If it rains less than a half-inch in a week, make up the difference with supplemental watering.
It is best to water deep, but infrequently. Rather than watering a little every day, water once a week when rainfall hasn’t already done the job for you.
In the winter, when the ground is frozen or when the outdoor temperature is below freezing, cease supplemental watering until the ground thaws and temperatures rise again.
If growing hardneck garlic, you can stop watering after you have cut the scapes. For softneck garlic, stop watering a week before you expect to harvest.
When and How to Harvest Garlic
In Southern climates, fall-planted garlic may be ready to be pulled up as soon as May or June. In the North, harvest time will likely be around the middle of July or as last as mid-August.
When garlic is approaching maturity, the leaves running up the stalk turn yellow then brown, starting at the bottom of the plant and moving up. The leaves begin to lose their vigor and start to flop over. This is a good sign that your garlic is approaching maturity.
The leaves of garlic stalks turn yellow and then brown starting at the bottom of the plant when it’s approaching maturity.
Popular advice is that the garlic is ready when the first four leaves, counting from the bottom, have browned. This is about a third of the stalk’s height. When at least half of your garlic plants reach this stage, cease watering for a week, then perform a test by pulling up one bulb.
Yanking the bulbs out of the soil forcefully may damage the plant. Before trying to pull up garlic, carefully loosen the soil around it with a trowel of a garden fork. Then the bulb should come out of the ground with ease.
If the first bulb appears much smaller than the variety was expected to grow to, water the remaining garlic and give the bulbs another week to grow, and then repeat the test. Be mindful that the smallest cloves planted will not catch up to the size of the bulbs produced by the biggest cloves.
The cloves of garlic bulbs left in the ground for too long will begin to separate and the protective skin may crack.
When garlic comes out of the ground, do not remove the stalk or roots. Garlic needs to be cured for storage first, or it will have a very short shelf-life.
After harvesting garlic, do not remove the stalk or the roots until after curing. Shake off loose dirt but don’t clean the bulbs with water. (photo: Amy Prentice)
Curing and Storing Garlic
After the garlic has been pulled up, shake off the loose dirt, but do not rinse or scrub the garlic. Keep the entire plant intact at this stage and don’t let it get wet. If it is a warm, dry day, the garlic will benefit from a few hours outdoors to dry out, but it’s best to avoid high temperatures over 90 F, bright sunlight, and if it’s wet out, it’s best to get the garlic indoors straightaway.
Curing is a process that will toughen up the bulb and ready it for storage, and it improves the flavor.
In a house or well-ventilated garage and out of direct sunlight, garlic plants can be placed on wire racks or hung, roots up. They should be spaced out to allow airflow so it dries quickly and does not get moldy. (Run a fan if you can.)
Garlic can be cured by laying it flat and spacing it out in a well-ventilated area. This process prepares the bulbs for storage and improves the taste.
Leave the entire plant intact for curing.
After 10-14 days, the outer skin of each head of garlic should be dry and papery. At this point, the stalks can be cut off and composted. In the case of softneck garlic, the stalks may be left on for braiding.
Garlic deteriorates faster once a clove has been broken off from the head, so it’s best to keep heads whole until cloves are needed.
Garlic should be kept in a dry, dark place to discourage sprouting. A garlic keeper jar, with holes for ventilation, or a paper bag works well. Never put garlic in a plastic bag or an air-tight container, as trapped moisture will cause mold.
At room temperature — assuming the room is relatively dry — garlic will last one or two months, if not longer. At cooler temperatures, down to 40° Fahrenheit, garlic will last its longest. Storing at a relative humidity of 60 to 70% with good airflow is ideal to prevent the accumulation of moisture.
If you set aside your largest bulbs each year and plant the largest cloves, you can repeat the cycle indefinitely and your garlic will continue to improve.
If you set aside your largest garlic bulbs and then plant the largest cloves, you will improve your garlic crop every year. (photo: Amy Prentice)
What varieties of garlic are your favorite to grow? Share with us in the comments below.
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When to plant garlic?
It is impossible to imagine our diet without fragrant, pungent cloves. They are eaten with pleasure with borsch, added to salads and meat dishes, put in sauces and jars of pickles. At the time of the first Olympic Games, garlic was equated with doping. Despite the undemanding care and growing conditions, gardeners often cannot boast of a high yield. What's the matter? Poor-quality planting material, the wrong variety or the wrong planting time? Let's figure out when to plant garlic? nine0003
In central Russia, plantings are predominantly in autumn. This is rational, in the hot springtime you do not have to spend time planting garlic.
Advantages of autumn planting:
- The plant does not spend energy on vegetation, strong roots begin to form almost immediately.
- Autumn planting is extremely simple - planted, watered and you can forget about the garden until spring.
The main advantage of spring garlic is its excellent keeping quality, but in terms of yield it is inferior to its winter counterpart. In the home pantry, spring planting garlic successfully reaches the new harvest, while winter cloves begin to wither and deteriorate after the New Year. nine0003
Planting time
To get a high yield, it is important not to miscalculate the planting date. Usually this is the beginning or middle of October. However, the weather makes its own adjustments. If the autumn is warm, you should not rush, the first frosts have come - you need to hurry. It is necessary to plant before the onset of steadily cold weather so that your garlic has time to take root well, but does not give seedlings that will die under the snow and weaken the plants.
Experienced agronomists believe that for good development and a high yield, it is necessary that garlic go into winter, having 10-12 roots 5-7 cm long. It will take 30-35 days to develop such a root system.
With spring garlic, everything is much simpler. Cloves can be planted as soon as the snow melts, and with the onset of stable heat, active root growth will begin.
Planting the right way
Start preparing the bed two weeks before planting. The first thing to do is to dig up the soil on the bayonet of a shovel with the simultaneous introduction of organic matter (7-8 kg of humus or compost per m2). Digging to a great depth is not an easy job, requiring a lot of strength. When using a professional tool, such an activity brings pleasure. With a light, reliable shovel, to which the soil does not stick, and the blade does not have to be sharpened often, you can literally turn mountains in a short time (bayonet shovel IDEALSPATEN).
nine0003
The optimal garlic planting pattern is 5-7 cm between plants in a row and 15-20 cm between rows. The ideal depth of planting material is 8-10 cm. Through such a layer of soil, tender, not yet rooted teeth will not “grab” upon the onset of early frosts, and in spring at a depth there will be enough moisture for powerful growth. It is difficult to make deep grooves with a hoe. To make holes for the tines, a Royal Dutch Hand Sneeboer Hoe will do, the DeWit Corkscrew Rooter is long enough, you don't even have to bend over. It remains only to lay a prong in each hole with the tail up, and then level the soil. nine0003
Choose tools from the best European brands in the catalog of the online store Cadeaux.ru, remember when to plant garlic, do not forget to feed the seedlings and prepare bags for a good harvest.
Planting garlic: timing, schemes, planting calendar
Cultivation of garlic is a complex process, all stages of which are closely interconnected.
The most critical and responsible is the harvesting operation. Therefore, planting garlic and growing technology are planned depending on the chosen method for the upcoming harvest. nine0003
Preparation of planting material
Immediately before planting, the seeds must be crushed into teeth and sized. Large and medium seeds are selected for sowing. It is very important to plant the prepared material quickly, because in crushed form it begins to lose moisture and its strength for germination decreases with each day of storage. It is desirable that the time before landing is no more than 1-2 days. If the area is not large, you can use manual labor. As practice shows, 15 people can prepare 1000 kg of planting material for an 8-hour working day. nine0003
Planting method
If you plan to carry out a harvesting campaign with the help of special equipment, then it would be right to entrust the machines to plant garlic, since only mechanization can guarantee parallel rows, a constant planting depth and distance between plants.
Of course, the most favorable conditions for germination are created when the clove is placed strictly vertically, bottom down. According to statistics, with a mechanized landing method, about a fifth of the teeth can deviate from the vertical axis. However, the yield decreases slightly, within 10-12%. nine0003
Geometry of beds
The optimal layout of the field should be planned based on the equipment that is available, the main thing is to follow these rules:
- The interval between plants in a row should be 8-12 cm, based on the characteristics of the variety and the average size of a single tooth / chive
- If, for some reason, the distance between rows still needs to be made less than 25 cm, then the interval between plants in row 9 must be proportionally increased0068
- The narrower the tractor wheels, the easier it is to maneuver between rows and more plants can be planted per unit area
When growing without irrigation, we recommend the technology of planting garlic 45cm + 45cm on narrow wheels:
And the scheme with drip irrigation 45cm + 30cm on narrow wheels:
inline and 4-line schemes.
The required amount of planting material for 1 hectare of cultivated area (in kg) can be calculated on our calculator or according to the table of A. A. Bogatyrenko:
Planting depth
The key parameter affecting the safety of winter crops and yield is also the planting depth of garlic. They choose it, focusing on a complex of natural factors, the characteristics of the seed material and the timing of planting garlic.
- Climate zone. When planting garlic in autumn, choose a depth of 6-12 cm. So that the seeds avoid freezing, the soil temperature at the level of the cloves should not fall below -9°C. It is important to take into account the winter hardiness of the variety. Planting garlic in the spring can be done at a shallower depth.
- Ground characteristics. The type of soil determines its ability to protect seeds from cold and retain moisture.
- Clay soil is characterized by low hygroscopicity, does not retain heat well, therefore the recommended planting depth of winter garlic (from the bottom of the bulb) is 6-7 cm.
- Light sandy loamy , insufficiently moistened soil requires planting large-sized seed material at a depth of 9-10 cm.
- Chernozem usually has a light texture that provides good aeration and protection from temperature changes. This feature is very valuable when planting garlic for the winter. For such soil, the optimal planting depth is 6-7 cm.
- Clay soil is characterized by low hygroscopicity, does not retain heat well, therefore the recommended planting depth of winter garlic (from the bottom of the bulb) is 6-7 cm.
- Caliber for planting material. The technology for planting spring garlic, as well as winter garlic, directly depends on the crop variety and the average size of the single-tooth. The depth for winter varieties, counting from the bottom, should be from 5-6 cm for small teeth to 8-10 cm for large ones. The timing of planting spring garlic does not imply negative ambient temperatures, so the seed material is planted so that the top of the clove is located no deeper than 2 cm from ground level. nine0068
Garlic planting calendar
The optimal time for planting campaign varies by area.
Experienced farmers decide when to plant garlic, taking into account local climatic conditions. You should not focus only on the weather - autumn is changeable and warm days can suddenly give way to the first frosts, after which it will be too late to plant garlic.
Taking into account the rules of industrial cultivation of winter garlic in Ukraine, professional producers of agricultural products choose planting dates depending on the region:
- in the western and southern regions, favorable days for planting garlic are in October, in the last decade;
- in the central regions - in the third decade of September, it is allowed to plant winter garlic in October, in the first days;
- in the eastern and northern - in the middle decade of September.
The term is selected in such a way that by the beginning of winter the plants have time to form a root system and take root firmly, perhaps even germinate up to 2 cm and release 1-2 leaves.
