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Any idiot can grow garlic. Seriously. When's the last time you watched a television special on the "Remarkable Garlic Growing Person"? Never. Because you do not have to be remarkable in any way, shape or form to successfully grow garlic. But you do have to plant it - and the time to plant is October.
Skip right to the instructions.
I'll be planting my garlic in the next few weeks. Garlic is a fall planted crop that's harvested in July. October is the time to plant your garlic for next year's harvest. This right here is a step by step tutorial on how to plant, grow, harvest and store one of my favourite crops - garlic
Many, many, many, several, too many to count ... years ago, my father brought home some garlic. And THAT is when my garlic growing obsession began.
I'm obsessed with many things, that's how I've learned to do so much and why I can't sleep at night because I'm always plotting, planning or cleaning up after my latest venture. Occasionally I'm getting rid of evidence.
Same for bean sprouts. You can grow bean sprouts at home in 4 days.These are not difficult skills.
For growing garlic you just need some garlic and some dirt.Ready? Let's plant some garlic.
The first thing you need to know is which type you should be planting: hardneck or softneck garlic?
What's the difference between Hardneck and Softneck garlic?
Softneck garlic
- Softneck garlic is best grown in warmer climates.
- Has no stalk that grows up from the centre and therefore doesn't produce a garlic scape.
- Softneck garlic heads are generally smaller than hardneck and have smaller cloves.
- The head of a softneck garlic can be made up of multiple rows of garlic cloves.
- Softneck garlic will store for 6-8 months if kept in optimal conditions.
Hardneck garlic
- Hardneck garlic is best grown in cooler climates.
- It has a long hard stalk that grows up from the centre of the head, producing a scape in June and a flower head later in the season filled with little garlic bulbils which you can use as garlic seed.
- Hardneck garlic is larger than softneck and has bigger cloves.
- Cloves form the head in a single row.
- Hardneck garlic will store for 4-6 months if kept in optimal conditions.
So generally speaking, if you live in a climate where you get lots of very cold temperatures and snow in the winter, plant hardneck. If you live in a warmer climate with mild winters and hot summers, softneck garlic is for you.
How to Grow Garlic
Separate your garlic head into cloves. Just pull them apart. Pick out the biggest cloves for planting.
The flat end of the garlic is the root end.
The pointy end is the tip of the garlic. It needs to point up.
You want to plant the garlic "root" end down and pointy end up. The tip of the clove should be about 3 inches below the ground. The bigger the clove you plant, the bigger the resulting head of garlic will be.
If you sprinkle a little oregano on top of the garlic and squeeze a tomato over everything, in 9 months you'll have grown a delicious marinara sauce.
No you won't.
Plant the garlic cloves so they're around 4 inches apart and their tips are covered by a few inches of dirt.
Cover them up and wait. Through the fall the clove will start to develop roots and maybe even a shoot depending on how warm your weather is.
By the spring with a little help from sun, water and these little guys to aerate the soil, you'll have garlic plants starting! A single clove, produces an entire head of garlic.
Harvesting takes place in July and is accompanied by the traditional garlic harvesting dance. That's followed by curing the garlic and properly storing it - which do not have official dances associated with them. Curing and storing is treated with reverence. Just kidding. I dance for those things too.
How to Grow Garlic.
Active Time: 30 minutes
Additional Time: 10 months
Total Time: 10 months 30 minutes
How to grow hardneck garlic. From planting to harvesting.
Materials
- Heads of garlic
Tools
- Trowel or shovel
Instructions
- Separate your head of garlic into individual cloves.
- Choose the largest cloves for planting.
- Plant the garlic, flat end down (the root end) in a hole that is 3-4" deep. When covered with soil, the tip of the garlic should be around 2" below the soil line.
- Fall planted garlic will develop roots underground in the fall and then go dormant through the winter. In spring it starts to grow again.
- In June, hardneck garlic will send up "scapes". Scapes are the tip of the growing stalk. Cut these off once they loop into a complete circle.
- DON'T THROW THE SCAPES OUT. You can use them for cooking or making a DELICIOUS garlic scape pesto.
- Stop watering your garlic 2 weeks before you harvest. (Around the time the lower leaves on the plant have turned brown.)
- Dig garlic up in July when one half of the leaves are brown. This indicates the garlic is ready to be harvested.
- Cure your garlic by hanging it in a well ventilated, shaded area like a porch. Leave it to dry for 2 weeks. This curing process will help your garlic to store much longer.
- Once cured you can cut the roots off of your garlic and the stem, leaving 1-2" of stem above the bulb.
- Store garlic between 55-65 degrees Fahrenheit. A humidity level of 65% is the best.
Notes
- The bigger the clove you plant the bigger the head of garlic will be.
- If properly stored hardneck garlic will store for around 6 months.
- You can also freeze your garlic cloves. Just separate the cloves and put them in a freezer safe container. Do not remove the skins, they're a protective layer.
- Want garlic powder? Dry extra garlic in a dehydrator and then grind it into homemade garlic powder.
- Softneck garlic is planted and grown the exact same way except it's planted in the spring and there are no scapes to remove.
- If you missed the fall planting for your garlic, don't worry! You can still plant it in the spring and get a good garlic harvest. A gardener at my community garden does this every year. Your garlic heads may just be a little smaller than fall planted garlic.
Can You Use Grocery Store Garlic for Planting?
What's The Best Variety of Garlic to Grow?
Can I Plant My Garlic in the Spring? Because I Forgot/Ran Out of Time/Couldn't Be Bothered To Plant It in the Fall.
How Much Should I Water It?
Water your garlic just like you would any other crop you're growing. The fall is usually a rainy time and once I plant it I don't water it at all. I just let nature run its course. What IS important though is to stop watering your garlic 2 weeks before you harvest. Around the time the lower leaves on the plant have turned brown. This helps speed up curing and the drying of the papers around the head.
When Can I Dig It Up?
So if your garlic has 6 sets of leaves, when the lowest 3 sets have turned brown, it's time to dig it up.
How do you dig up garlic? Just rip it out?
Um, no. Don't harvest your garlic by trying to pull and manhandle it out of the ground. Dig it. Otherwise you may break the head apart.
How to store garlic.
Even then your garlic will start to sprout and dry out by late winter or early spring. So if you have a lot of garlic heads you should freeze unpeeled cloves or heads in the freezer. Garlic freezes perfectly. You can also preserve garlic by slicing it thin and putting it in a dehydrator at 125 F until it's fully dried and crispy. Then put the dried garlic it in a coffee or spice grinder and grind it into a powder. Your very own homemade garlic powder is NOTHING like store bought. It actually smells and tastes like fresh garlic.
What kind of dehydrator do you use?
I use an Excalibur dehydrator (it's pretty much what most dehydrating enthusiasts use) for all my dehydrating projects. You can take a look at the Excalibur dehydrator here (this one is white, but mine is black.)
Hands down my favourite garlic recipe is actually one that doesn't use any garlic at all. It uses the garlic scapes I harvest in June, which is yet ANOTHER reason to grow garlic. My garlic scape pesto is delicious on pasta or pizza and stores for a year in the freezer.
Now you have all the information you need on how to grow garlic so get out there and get your hands dirty. Or for the more refined among you - soily.
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Reader Interactions
Comments
Ellie FournierThinking about planting my garlic in a small plastic kiddie pool. It's 8" deep, about 4' diameter & I'd need to cut drainage holes. Do you foresee any problems with using his type of container for growing garlic? Would anything need to be done differently in this case? I think my main concern is whether the depth is sufficient. I'd appreciate your opinion about this. Thanks!
Reply
- Karen
Hi Ellie. I have absolutely no reason to think it wouldn't work, but I don't like the idea of it. If you want something inexpensive and small to plant in, I would use 5 gallon buckets. You can grow anything in a 5 gallon bucket. ~ karen!
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- Ellie Fournier
Thanks for the feedback, Karen!
- Lynn
Oh how you made me laugh , when you talked about growing your own Marina sauce. It actually made my eyes tear up for several minutes each time I thought about it even after i finally got to finish reading .
Reply
- Karen
There's nothing funnier than marinara sauce. ~ karen!
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- Annamay
How do you clean all the dirt off the bulbs? Or do you hang them with all the dirt on them?
Reply
- Karen
Hi Annamay. Other than huge clumps, I leave the dirt on them. If you want the garlic to look pretty for gifting, after it has cured you can peel the outer paper layer off to reveal the bright white, clean skin underneath. However, the less paper skins you remove from the head, the better. They help the head keep longer. ~ karen!
- Darin
Can you plant garlic in containers?
Reply
- Karen
Hi Darin. You absolutely can. I can't actually think of anything you can't grow in a container. The only thing you might have to do differently is to insulate the pot depending on the size and where it is you live and how cold it gets. If you live somewhere extremely cold, before really cold weather sets in but after the garlic bulbs have sprouted I would cover the pots with straw. ~ karen!
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- Sabina
We renovated our beds this year, swapping out the rotting cedar with galvanized, open bottom beds. This also increased the depth above ground from 8” to 24”. Can I still plant my hardneck garlic in one of the new beds or does it need to bed closer to the ground?
Reply
- Karen
Hey Sabina. As long as there's soil underneath and it gets sun and water you can plant the garlic almost anywhere. Whether it's in an 8" raised bed or a 24" won't matter. ~ karen!
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- Carolyn
Hey Karen, can you explain why the scapes must be cut off? What happens if the plants are left untrimmed?
Reply
- Karen
Hi Carolyn. The scapes turn into long straight stems and the tip of them flowers. That means a lot of the garlic plant's energy goes into producing the pretty flower and bulbils (mini garlics) in the flower rather than towards the head of garlic under the soil. So if you don't cut the scapes off you'll get much smaller garlic heads. ~ karen!
Reply
- That Oddball
Karen The Magnificent, you ever ferment garlic?
Excellent, simple method to preserve some yummies out of the garden.Reply
- Karen
Hey Oddball. I have not! I already have black garlic on my list of things to do with garlic other than throwing it in the freezer (which actually works incredibly well for preserving it). ~ karen!
Reply
- Eats Weed
As the garlic comes out off the ground can the leaves themselves be eaten; at which stage - small or medium or large; raw or cooked if they can? Thank you as I was going to prepare the ground for them tomorrow! Since your wisdom has helped so many then this might be for to pay you back some. One radish seed planted will produce about 400 seed pods in ideal conditions. Each of those pods is edible and tastes just like the radish and extends the time for "raw radish" in salads +.
Reply
- Karen
Yes! Radish pods are fantastic! They're even more fun than eating radishes themselves. :) ~ karen!
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- Heather
I thought about growing garlic this year... Set some cloves aside from smaller heads with that exact intention, then got frustrated and chucked then into the compost bin. Three days later I get this email. If that's not a sign I don't know what is! I dig the cloves out from the coffee grounds and banana peels to see they've already started rooting. Thank you for encouraging me to give them a second chance! 💚
Reply
- Karen
Yup. It's a sign! Now I have to take my own advice & dig out some time to plant my own garlic, lol. ~ karen!
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- Ingrid Moriarty
OMG! I love this put into recipe format! THANK YOU!!!
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- Lisbeth Slabotsky
Hi. I live in Ontario, Canada. In an apt. I'm on the 12th floor and face south. There is NOTHING in front of me to block sun or wind. Because of that, growing anything on the balcony is impossible. Except maybe garlic??? Can I grow it in a pot? Do I have to bring the pot indoors once the temp. drops below 0c/32F? I love garlic and I love garlic scapes. They're just showing up in the grocery stores. I look forward to your response.
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- Erin
It's been so warm, I've been putting off planting my garlic. But yesterday I tackled half of it. Feels good to have it in the ground and rain is on its way.
I've planted as late as December waiting for the right conditions, but that is nerve-racking. I've tarped the next row to keep it a bit drier and to kill off the bean crop that was growing there. Here's hoping for another window of good planting weather.!Reply
- Tamara
I planted my garlic about ten days ago (in October as suggested) and it is now about 6 - 8" out of the ground. It sprouted immediately. Will it be okay or should I plant some more in November?
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- Benjamin
Perfect timing on this Karen. I needed something to do in my garden this weekend. I'm totally planting garlic !! 🧄
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- Janice
You say to stop watering the garlic 2 weeks before harvest. What if we are getting a fair amount of rain. I live in southern Ontario. I do water but we are also getting a lot of rain up here. I can still watering but I can’t stop the rain.
Reply
- Karen
Hi Janice. It's O.K. if it rains. There's nothing you can do about that. :) Just try to pick it after the soil has dried a bit so the heads come out cleaner and not covered in clumps of wet soil. ~ karen!
Reply
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