Plant Garlic In The Fall

Hi, Sweet Friends,

Today, we planted our Garlic. Garlic can be planted in the Fall or in the Winter. Fall planted Garlic will be bigger in size and ready for harvesting in the Spring. It is wonderful to have a good hearty crop of garlic to add to recipes and to use for cold and flu season!

One of the last garden chores of the season is planting garlic. We plant our garlic in September.

This is 2016 crop I'm showing you here because it takes a long time (two seasons) for the end result (I'll update this post with Spring 2020 photos). We plant in Fall for a Spring or Summer Crop. I take a garlic bulb and split it into individual cloves.

The garlic bulb, above, shows the many individual cloves that you pull off the center root system.

The Garlic Flowers come out! They look quite Alien!

Check out this article from Mother Earth News

This garlic has bloomed. The flowers fade and the garlic seed becomes visible.

Six Steps for Planting Garlic

1. Plan to plant garlic in fall about four to six weeks before the ground freezes.
2. Prepare the soil by loosening it to a depth of at least 8" and mix in some slow-release, granular organic fertilizer.
3. Just prior to planting, break up the garlic heads into individual cloves, leaving as much of the papery covering on each clove intact as possible.
4. Plant cloves 3" to 4" deep, orienting them so the pointy ends facing up.
5. Water gently to settle the soil and then cover the bed with a 4" to 6" layer of straw. Even as air temperatures drop, the soil will stay warm enough for the newly planted cloves to establish roots before the ground freezes. Sometimes you'll see some green shoots form in fall; that's fine and won't harm plants. They'll begin growing in earnest in spring.
6. Next spring and summer, keep the bed weeded and watered.

Here is an article on how you can plant your own garlic and harvest it in the Spring.

***TIP from Grow a Good Life

"Mulch Your Garlic Bed. Water the garlic bed well after planting and cover with a light layer of mulch, such as straw or shredded leaves. Aim for about 2-3 inches of mulch to keep the weeds down until the ground freezes. After the ground freezes, add another layer of 2-3 inches of mulch to insulate the soil. This helps prevent the garlic roots from being heaved out of the ground by alternate freezing and thawing."

Garlic is much like onions in that garlic keeps up to 10 months after harvest.

Drying the Garlic after harvesting:
 Here are some resources where we purchase our Garlic Bulbs:

Johnny's Seeds 

Johnny's Select Seeds has a sale on their garlic now!

Burpee
Burpee carries 53 Garlic varieties to try! 
***NOTE***
These are not affiliate links, we are customers who love their products! 🧡💛💖

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Enjoy!

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