Planting Garlic

Garlic is easily grown in all areas from cloves that are also easily acquired.  You can get them from the supermarket, if you don't care whether or not they are organic.  Or you can get them from a farmer's market, which is a better choice.  Or the best choice would be to get cloves from an on-line source like Park Seed.  The thing about garlic is that it takes  about 9 months to form a full head underground.  That's a long time for a crop.  It's usually planted in the fall and harvested the following summer. You can also harvest it in the early spring, for what's called "spring garlic."  The head hasn't bulbed up yet, but the tender just-forming shoots are more mild and a rare treat to use in the kitchen. 

Garlic is one of my favorite things to grow because it is one of the very few crops where, for me at least, there are NO BUGS INVOLVED!

When something I plant grows for 6 or more months without one single pest attempting to kill it, eat it, lay its eggs on it, uproot it, or otherwise ruin it, it’s HELLA fun!  No worry gardening.  More crops like that, and this whole farmin’ thang might actually be more fun than work.  Oops, just thought of something that tries to ruin the garlic, but it’s easily dealt with.  After planting, about two weeks later the cloves start to sprout and break the surface.  On the first day they emerge, and before they can turn green from photosynthesis, the tip is white.  The birds around here mistake the tiny tip as a worm, and hop into the bed to investigate.  They tug at it, often pulling the whole clove out of the ground.  I can easily pop it back in, but the birds do not learn that it’s not something they want to eat, and keep pulling them out.  To prevent this, I cover the bed with the lightest weight floating row cover.  Water, air and sunlight can go right through this cover.  The birds, however, leave well enough alone.  Once the garlic gets going, oh about 4 inches tall or so, I can remove the cover without any more bird worries.

Here’s how I plant garlic:

We’re using cloves from last season’s crop.  We had a lot more garlic than the restaurant could use, and so instead of having to buy garlic cloves for planting, I had a ready stock.  Since biodynamic farmers try to save all their own seeds, I felt great that we had some good garlic cloves for planting.  In this photo, you see two different types of garlic bunches, the one on the left is soft-neck and the one on the right is hard-neck.  The hard-neck have fewer, larger cloves and have a moderately long shelf life.  The soft-neck have more, smaller cloves and generally have the longest shelf life (in some cases up to 9-10 months).  Soft-necks are easier to grow and tolerate warmer temperatures and more climatic variability.  I grew both types last season and had good luck with both.

Since we had our own heads, all we had to to was cut off the stems with a pruners and then separate the cloves: