Planting Garlic
Planting Garlic
2011
Today we planted garlic but the process started several days ago. Last year I planted three 34 foot rows of garlic. That was too much garlic and space used in the garden. This year I’m planting two rows, we will see how that works out. When planting garlic you want to plant early enough that the roots will be well developed but late enough that the tops do not emerge from the ground before it gets cold. For me that is about 6 weeks before it gets cold. Here it gets cold about Thanksgiving so I plant early October. This year we still have not had a killing frost so we have been busy preserving our harvest and I am a bit late in planting. To prepare the soil we broad forked it and worked in about an inch of well rotted horse manure with a three tined claw.
Two days ago I popped the garlic bulbs so the base plate (the attachment point) would have a couple of days to heal and callous over before coming into contact with the soil. To pop the bulbs remove the wrappers and carefully separate the cloves from the bulb. Check each of the cloves to make sure that the base plate is not broken. The base plate is the stem of the garlic plant. The roots and leaves grow from there. The paper wrappers around the garlic bulb are the bottoms of the leaves. A broken or damaged base plate will not grow a good garlic plant. You want to plant the largest cloves from your largest bulbs as these will yield the largest bulbs next year. The smaller cloves will be eaten or dehydrated and made into garlic powder.
To plant hold the top of the clove with your thumb and first two fingers and plant to a depth where your fingers are in the soil up to your hand. That makes the top of the clove three inches below the top of the soil. Garlic should be planted 6 to 8 inches apart from the next plant. Garlic does not compete well with weeds or other garlic plants so give them plenty of space. I plant in a 30 inch wide bed alternating three cloves and then two cloves across the bed with the rows 6 inches apart. In a 34 foot row I will plant about 160 cloves. It looks like this:
| X X X |
| |
| X X |
| |
| X X X |
After planting the garlic I mulch the bed with compost about 3 inches deep. This helps to protect the plants from freezing and feeds the earthworms in my garden. After the compost has been applied I water very throughly. I will come back and water deeply a couple more times before it gets cold. That is all there is to planting garlic. Next spring the tops will emerge through the compost by mid March and the plants will need to be fertilized. Garlic is a heavy feeder and needs fertilizer much earlier than most people are thinking about fertilizing their garden. One of the secrets to having a good garlic crop is to fertilize early and heavy.
If you are interested in growing garlic most seed companies sell garlic bulbs for seed. Consider ordering a garlic sampler with a few bulbs of several types of garlic. This will give you a chance to see which grow best in your garden and which you like the most. Order your seed garlic in the summer. By fall when it is time to plant most seed companies are sold out of the popular varieties. Seed garlic can be expensive. The garlic I grow sold for $8.00 a bulb or $20 a pound from several seed companies this year. i grow a Porcelain hard necked garlic named German Extra Hardy.
Herrick Kimball has blogged extensively about how he grows garlic. An index of his garlic posts is located here:
http://thedeliberateagrarian.blogspot.com/2008/01/deliberate-agrarian-archives-garlic.html
The University of Minnesota Extension service has the best fact sheet on garlic that I have found. It is located here:
http://www.extension.umn.edu/distribution/cropsystems/dc7317.html
If you want to learn more about this wonderful crop there are two books that I recommend. The first is Growing Great Garlic by Ron L. Engeland. Ron Engeland owns Filaree Garlic Farm and is a great source of garlic seed stock. His website is http://www.filareefarm.com/
The second book is The Complete Book of Garlic A Guide For Gardeners, Growers, and Serious Cooks. This is an extensive 329 page hardcover book and goes into much more detail than you may want unless you become captivated by this marvelous plant.
Since we started growing and using garlic our food is better and my family is healthier. I think everyone should have a garlic patch in their garden.
Planting Garlic
10/19/11
Garlic should be planted about 6 weeks before the ground freezes. Here it usually turns cold about Thanksgiving so garlic should be planted early to mid October.