Growing Garlic at Home

Garlic (Allium sativum L.) is a popular spice in cooking. It is related to onions and chives. You can grow your own garlic in your garden. This guide will tell you how.

What Type Of Garlic To Grow

Garlic comes in either hard neck or soft neck varieties. Elephant garlic is not a true garlic but is more closely related to leeks.

Hard Neck Garlic

Hard neck garlic has a stalk that comes out of the center of the clove. It becomes rigid at maturity. The scapes, as these stalks are called, may curl instead. When that happens, you can cut them off and eat them. Hard neck garlic does not store as well as soft neck garlic, and the leaves cannot be braided into a string of garlic. Hard neck garlic is cold hardy, so it is a good choice for people in the north. It must have to go through a period of cold to form a bulb.

Soft Neck Garlic

Soft neck garlic is a good choice for places that do not have cold winters. Grocery store garlic is soft neck. Soft neck garlic stores better, too.

How To Care For Garlic

Buy only certified disease-free garlic bulbs from a reputable dealer. Grocery store garlic is sprayed to retard sprouting, so don’t use it.

Soil

Plant garlic in well-drained soil rich in organic matter. If your soil does not have a lot of organic matter, spread three inches of compost over the area and work it into the top six inches of soil. The soil pH needs to be between 6.0-7.0, so adjust that if needed.

Light

Garlic needs at least six hours of sunlight to grow.

Planting

Garlic is planted in the fall for harvesting in the late spring/early summer.

1. The day before planting, break the bulb down into individual cloves, being careful not to damage the skin on the cloves.
2. Spread urea on the area you will be planting.
3. Dig a trench about three to four inches deep.
4. Place the cloves in the trench with the pointy side up.
5. Space the cloves six inches apart.
6. Fill in the trench.
7. Cover the area with mulch three inches deep.

The garlic will sprout in the fall. It will go dormant when it gets cold. You can remove the fall sprouts and eat them. In early spring, remove the mulch so the soil will warm up and the garlic will sprout.

Water

Water one inch of water a week all at once. In hot climates, you may have to water more than once a week to keep the soil evenly moist but not soggy. Stop watering two weeks before harvest so the garlic will store well.

Fertilizer

Garlic needs a lot of nitrogen. When the sprouts emerge in spring, top dress with a fertilizer high in nitrogen. Reapply the fertilizer two to three weeks later. Do not apply nitrogen after late spring, or you will retard bulb development.

Weeds

Weeds can quickly choke out young garlic plants. Garlic roots are shallow, so be careful when using a hoe not to damage the roots.

Mulch

Once the garlic leaves have started growing in the spring, spread three inches of mulch around them. The mulch helps control weeds. It also conserves water and helps keep the soil warmer in cooler weather and cooler in hot weather.

Pests

The onion maggot (Delia antique) is the major pest of garlic. The onion maggot can kill a garlic plant. The adults are dark gray with dark gray stripes and about 1/4 inch long. They resemble a house fly. The larvae are legless maggots about 1/4 inch long. These maggots are yellowish-cream and tappers from head to tail. The adult lays eggs at the base of the garlic plant. When the eggs hatch, the larvae crawl into the soil and eat the roots and bulbs of the garlic, causing the leaves to turn yellow and wilt. Bad infestations can kill garlic.

Diseases

Garlic gets several diseases, but Fusarium basal rot is the most common. The bottom of the bulb where it meets the roots starts to rot, then the rot goes up into the bulb and down into the roots. The rot prevents water and nutrients from going into the bulb, causing the leaves to turn yellow and die back. Fusarium basal rot enters the garlic plant through wounds from insects or tools. The rot will continue when the bulb is stored in temperatures above 39 degrees F.

Preventing Diseases And Pests

Neither of these garlic problems can be treated successfully. Once the symptoms start, it is all ready too late to stop the problem. Here are some preventative tips.

Clean up any dead leaves, roots, or other parts of plants in the fall.

Till the soil well before planting garlic.

Use certified disease and pest-free seed garlic.

Do not plant garlic where onions, garlic, chives, or other crops vulnerable to Fusarium, such as tomatoes, have been planted in three years.

Harvesting And Storing Garlic

If garlic is harvested too early, the cloves will be small. Wait too late, and the cloves will break out of the bulb. Begin harvesting when the bottom leaves turn brown, and the top half of the garlic leaves are still green.

1. Dig the bulbs up. Do not try to pull the garlic up by the leaves.
2. Knock most of the soil off but do not wash the garlic.
3. Place the garlic, shoots, roots, and all, in a warm, dry place with lots of airflow for three to four weeks to cure.
4. Trim the roots off the bulb.
5. If you are growing hard-neck garlic, trim the leaves to about one-half inch.
6. With soft neck garlic, you can braid the bulbs together by their shoots if you wish or cut the shoots off one-half inch from the bulb.
7. Store garlic in a cool, dry place.

Hard neck garlic stores for three to five months. Soft neck garlic will store for up to nine months. Do not store the garlic in the refrigerator as it can get bitter. Once the bulb is broken into cloves, it will only store for about a week.