How to grow garlic

How to grow garlic

Hi ya’ll! Come along with me to see how to grow garlic in my raised garden bed. This year I tried planting hard neck and soft neck garlic. It’s super easy to do. Read on to learn more about growing garlic.

I feel like garlic is one of those expensive items at the grocery store that is over looked. It’s so easy to grow and you can yield a lot from one crop. So, you save money and get lots of garlic! It’s a win – win!

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How to grow garlic

To start let me tell you that I live in New York. My climate zone is #5. We get cold winters here. To plant garlic here I have to plant the bulbs in mid to late fall. They will then stay in the ground through the winter and be able to be harvested in spring/summer time.

Quick growing guide when to plant:

Climate zone 0-3 – August to early September, latest by late September

Climate zone 3-5 – Mid to late September, latest by early to mid October

Climate zone 5-7 – Early to mid October, latest by late October

Climate zone 7-9 – Late October, latest by November

I decided to try a hard neck garlic and a soft neck garlic as this is my first time planting garlic. Hard neck varieties tend to better with the cold weather but I wanted to try both and see what I yielded in the end.

I started by going to our local farmers market to buy some local hard neck garlic bulbs.

Success! I found some. They had a big basket full of it.

This is the hard neck garlic I bought there.

Then, I also picked up some organic soft neck garlic from the grocery store.

Hard neck garlic

Hard neck garlic is cold hardy. The characteristics of the bulbs are that the cloves grow around a hard stem. This variety also produces scapes or flower stems in the summer. You can remove them and add them to salads or cook with them.

Scapes grow from the hard neck garlic in the spring. Garlic scapes are thin, curly, green stems, resembling grass or wild onions. You can cut them off to allow more of the plant’s resources to stay focused within the bulb.

Soft neck garlic

Soft neck garlic is suitable for warmer climates. They have soft stalks that grow from them. After harvest and drying you can braid them together for pretty storage. The characteristics of the bulbs are their cloves grow in layers in the bulb. This type is more commonly found in the grocery store for its stronger flavor.

Planting

The spot I picked for the garlic is my raised beds from my summer crop. It’s an area that gets a lot of sun and drains well. Before I could plant the garlic I needed to clean out the left over summer crop.

I removed the fence, weed wacked and pulled the weeds out of the bed.

 

Fertilize

Fertilize the soil so the garlic have extra nutrients to store over the winter to grow better.

During my research it seemed that garlic likes nitrogen so I’m adding some to see if it helps.

Mix well so it gets deep in the soil for the roots of the garlic gloves receives the nutrients.

Separate the cloves from the bulb

You want to separate the cloves from the bulb. Remove some of the paper but not all of it. Make sure to use the biggest cloves.

Go through all cloves to pick the best and biggest ones to plant.

I placed the cloves spaced out where I wanted to plant them. For this crop I planted the hard neck garlic cloves on the right side and the soft neck garlic cloves on left side.

Planting

Make sure you place the garlic clove with the root facing down. That is where the new roots will grow.

Dig a hole about 4 inches deep. Space them about six inches apart.

Place one garlic clove in each hole. Completely cover with soil.

I reinstalled my fence and gave the new garlic crop a watering.

Sprouts

A few weeks after planting the garlic cloves I took a peek at the raised beds. I was pleasantly surprised to find that the soft neck garlic had sprouted. Yay!

I will keep an eye over the winter. I will have to do an update in the summer when I harvest the crop.

 

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Update

As promised, I am attaching a photo of my garlic from when I harvested it. The crop did good. I yielded most all the cloves I planted minus a a few. I will definitely be growing garlic again. How did your garlic do this year?

 

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