How to grow garlic

Can you imagine food without garlic? Whether Mediterranean, Indian, Chinese or Thai  as with so many other cuisines, garlic forms one of the major flavours  of our meals. But,yet for most of us the garlic that we eat is a pale imitation of what we can quite easily grow.

Where does garlic grow

Contrary to popular belief, probably because it’s such a staple of Mediterranean cuisine, garlic is not only a hardy vegetable to grow but the majority of varieties actually need a cold spell to get the cloves  to split into the familiar segmented bulb

So versatile

Not only in where you can grow it, but also in its uses -not just lifted air dried and stored like onions, it can also be used as wet or green garlic straight from the ground this has a high water content and a much milder flavour and in Chinese cuisine the young leaves and even immature flashings are used fresh or blanched. Garlic also comes in a range of colours from pink or white through purple but also surprisingly to some people flavour can vary from quite mild to surprisingly pungent depending on the variety you choose to grow.

The variety also influences how long garlic will keep for from as little as four months to 10 months or even a year for long keeping varieties if kept in good conditions.

Stock and varieties

One word of warning don’t be tempted to use supermarket bought garlic not only may this harbor viruses and diseases but some of the strains that are grown and sold commercially through supermarkets will have been flown thousands of miles and are very unlikely to adapt to your area or region and the small saving on cost could easily lead to long-term problems in your soil with viruses but also to the actual failure of your Garlic to grow and crop well.

As a member of the allium family which includes onions and leaks as well as Chives, Elephant garlic and Ornmental allium bulbs, your garlic needs to be included as part of your vegetable rotation if it all possible.

Situation

Garlic grows best in  well-drained soil and in as much sunshine as possible but with moderate fertility so it’s best to avoid freshly manured ground and  in a No-Dig system it’s best to follow the summer crop of beans and don’t top of the beds before sowing.

Spacing when planting

Garlic grows on average about 30 cm or 12 inches high and will produce good sized clove’s when planted in equidistant (squared pattern) spacing of about 18 cm or 7 inches.  One interesting point and contrary to what you might think if the clove’s you are planting are smaller than average they need a larger spacing to produce good sized bulbs.

You can plant them at the smaller spacing of only 2 cms and grow them to harvest the young green tops which are fantastic in stir fries.

When is the best time to plant Garlic

One of the simplest steps to growing Great garlic is to give it as long a growing season as possible the earlier you plant in the autumn the better for lots of varieties with the proviso that the garlic does not get too much soft leaf growth from an over rich soil as this could be damaged by Winter frosts. So in reality you can plant garlic from October till late March.

Garlic needs to catch a cold

Or to be more accurate, the majority of garlic cloves need to have a cool period of 30 to 60 days with temperatures ideally below 10°C and preferably 0° it is this cool period which causes the garlic to split and it grows numerous cloves rather than one large bulb.  A lot of the stronger flavoured types of Hardneck and Rocamboles varieties definitely need this and if they do not the lack of vernalization will mean the bulbs will not differentiate (divide into separate cloves) for those who want the technical definition.

Planting garlic

Planting garlic is really one of the easiest things to do, prepare the soil by raking in some calcified seaweed.  If you have some lime add this preferably a couple of weeks before planting, especially if you have slightly acidic soil. If you are planting in the autumn great use can be made of fresh ash from bonfires or wood burners and your garlic will respond wonderfully well to the available potash from fresh ash which is also great to apply in February if you are planting in the Autumn.

It is then a simple matter of breaking the cloves off the bulb but its important you don’t do this more than 24 hours before you are going to plant them gently push the clove’s 2 and a half cm deep on heavy soil and 4 cm deep for light soil, making sure that the root plate is at the bottom (pointy end up)

If your soil is very heavy a good tip is to use some coarse sand mixed with old compost or leafmould into the bottom of the planting hole created with a dibber, then topping up the planting hole with the same mix, this helps improve drainage for each individual clove and prevents roots rotting.

Options on heavy heavy ground

If you have a very heavy soil or a new plot that you want the winter frost to break down newly turned soil or if you have a very cold winters garlic can be started in modules.  These are best placed into a cold frame or a unheated greenhouse and then planted out in the spring using the same compost mix used for the planting holes, this works well as long as you don overfeed them.

Easy care

The best way to think of garlic  like onions and shallots, once established garlic only really requires you to weed between the growing plants.  I find the easiest way to accomplish this is by hand weeding as even slightly damaging the bulbs will render them no good for storage and can allow diseases to invade the plant. It’s also a job that is best done frequently so as not to disturb soil by having to remove larger weeds with bigger root systems.

Watering

You may need to water your garlic during dry periods throughout the growing season as all alliums benefit from regular watering but stopping watering completely during the last few weeks as this can affect storage and taste.

Garlic Scapes

These are the flower stems and flowers that do shoot up almost overnight on some Rocambole varieties and they should be removed as they will take lots of energy from the bulb.  You can increase the size your garlic bulbs by up to 20% simply by removing them but don’t throw these on the compost heap, you make a delicious side dish from them not unlike garlicky green bean or asparagus or even made into a delicious pesto and you can increasingly find them for sale in farmers markets.

When To harvest

It is important as it is quite different from onions and shallots to lift garlic just as the leaves start to turn yellow, normally this happens around mid-to-late summer.  You need to judge this carefully as you can crop to early and miss the late growth spurt or leave it too long!  Garlic shatters into its individual clothes – at the very least this makes the storage life short but they can also sprout which alters the taste and can make some varieties quite bitter and render them no good in the kitchen and they can easily rot in the ground.

How to harvest

It may sound daft but don’t be tempted to simply pull garlic out of the ground using the leaves but gently ease the bulbs out of the ground with a hand trowel, treat the garlic gently as any bruising will lead to rotting in storage, then it’s a matter of drying the bulbs before either platting or simply tying them in bunches and keeping in a cool frost free place.

Grown not flown

Home grown garlic really does bring a new dimension to your cooking as the varieties have amazingly diverse tastes, my own preferences I cover in my films, but whichever garlic you decide to grow, you will no doubt become hooked on growing Garlic because once you have tasted your own its hard to go back.

If you would more information on growing garlic I have compiled a resource post which contains all my films on growing garlic   just click the link below

Garlic resource