Complete Guide To Planting, Growing and Harvesting Garlic

Garlic is an easy-to-grow, widely-loved, flavorful garden herb, it’s a must-have for cooking, and noted for its many health benefits —many even eat a fresh clove (with food) as an natural antibiotic to prevent or slow colds and flu.

Homegrown garlic is an essential and broad-spectrum medicinal, it takes up very little room in your garden and doesn’t require much maintenance. In fact, even if you have a very small garden, you’ll find that you still have sufficient space to plant and grow a few cloves of garlic.

You can even grow garlic all within the comfort of your own home if you don’t have or want a garden.

Thanks to the help of TikToker Anh Lin (@girlandtheword), you now have an easy way to grow a bounty of them.

@girlandtheword

If you plant garlic in succession, you’ll never have to buy it again! 😊 Go to my Amazon storefront for all of my FAVE gardening supplies! 👍🏼

♬ original sound – Anh Lin (GirlandTheWord) 🏡

What You Need To Know Ahead of Time To Plant Garlic

• When choosing a planting spot, make sure to select a sunny spot in your garden with 6-8 hours of direct sunlight each day.

• Garlic needs well-drained, fertile soil with a pH level of 6.5 to 7. If the soil in your garden is on the sandy side, before you start planting, add healthy organic compost and aged manure. (Avoid using fresh animal manure as it can transfer diseases).

• Purchase known varieties of organic bulbs from a local nursery, farmer’s market, or online seed supplier. Beautiful organic garlic from the grocery worked well for us, but if it is irradiated or treated – it will not work. The fresher and the higher quality, the better.

• Garlic is a cool-weather perennial commonly planted in the fall (between late Sept. and Nov.) in areas that get a hard frost. Plant garlic cloves 6 to 8 weeks before the first fall frost date, before the ground freezes. 

• Protect fall-planted garlic with mulch before the ground freezes—a thick layer of straw or leaves—to protect bulbs from freezing or heaving ground. You can use organic materials like dry leaves, hay, straw, manure, or grass clippings to cover the planted cloves.

(If you live in a very cold winter region such as zone 3, very heavy mulch may protect bulbs if planted 4″ deep, or plant 3″ deep in spring as soon as the soil can be worked.)

• Keep in mind garlic requires cool temperatures of 32° to 50°F (0-10°C) during its first two months of growth, before temperatures drop and/or the ground freezes. Cool temperatures at planting time are important for garlic to establish its extensive root system. Then, by early spring, the bulbs “wake up” from their dormancy and start rapidly producing foliage, followed by enlarging bulbs under the soil, before the deep heat of summer stops their growth.

• There are two basic types of garlic: soft-neck and hard-neck. The “neck” is the stalk that grows up from the underground bulb. Just as the name indicates, soft-neck stalks are flexible and hard-neck have a central woody stem when mature. Soft-neck garlic varieties form more cloves and also keep longer once harvested.

• Elephant garlic—a very large cultivar and mild flavored—should be planted in late summer allowing extra time for it to make root growth before cold weather comes. In warm-winter regions, garlic can be planted in early winter.

Unlike other plants, you need to separate the bulb and plant the individual cloves (and you can leave the white papery covering on when planting).

Should You Soak Garlic Before Planting? Keene Organic garlic growers and others reduce the transmission of microorganisms that naturally live in garlic by soaking the cloves before planting. They believe it increases the size of the bulb by giving the plant some food before putting it to bed for winter.

Keene states, “It’s not mandatory that you soak garlic before planting. In fact, there are many successful garlic growers who omit this step.” They soak the cloves in a full strength cleaner such as 70% isopropyl alcohol or 3% hydrogen peroxide for 10 minutes. Then they soak the cloves in a container with a fertilizer like fish emulsion and add 1 teaspoon of baking soda per gallon of water. The cloves should soak for at least 30 minutes, up to overnight. You can read more here on Keene’s site.

When planting, choose the largest cloves. Very small cloves will produce smaller plants and smaller bulbs of garlic.

Plant cloves 2-3″ deep and place them flat-side down with the pointy side up and space 4-6 inches apart.

When first planted, be sure to water well. For the roots to develop, you need to keep the soil moist in the beginning.

Unless your soil is really fertile, your garlic cloves need some organic fertilizer (safe for food use) after planting in order to begin to develop strong heads of garlic. You also need to apply another layer of fertilizer in the spring.

In early spring, you will notice that the plants will start to add foliage. If they pop their green tops a little out of the soil, this is normal and not a cause for concern. And you can enjoy the strap-like garlic leaves. They’re delicious stir-fried or in salads.

Once established, avoid over-watering as garlic does not grow well when overly wet. As the weather warms up, reduce watering the plants to give the bulbs more time to mature.

Harvesting

It takes approximately nine months to grow garlic. If you’ve planted a dozen single cloves, after 9 months, they will become a dozen whole garlic heads!

Harvest in the summer when the tops of the plant are just starting to turn brown. At this time, hardneck varieties send up a green curled stalk with a flower bud (called a scape). Cut or break the top 6-8 inches off to produce larger bulbs underground. Scapes add a mild garlic flavor to recipes.

Garlic can’t be pulled by the stalk to harvest like you harvest onions or beets. The tops will break off, leaving the garlic bulb buried in the ground. I loosen the soil around each plant with a shovel and gently pull it out of the soil.

Does garlic have to be cured?

Garlic does not need to be cured. It’s edible right out of the ground. But if you want it to stay fresh in the pantry for a good long while, you have to take it through the process of curing—essentially just letting it dry. Use an old table or elevated shelving rack that gets filtered or indirect light. There’s no need to clean off all that dirt for now—you’ll tidy them up when you trim off the straps and roots.

As the garlic dries, the skin shrinks and turns papery, forming a protective barrier against moisture and mold. (source)

Expected yield of popular varieties (source)

Storing Whole Garlic

Sur La Table chef Richard Temples gives us some tips about storage:

• From a storage standpoint, it’s one of the most low-maintenance foods you can have in your kitchen.

• An unpeeled, whole head of garlic is typically good for approximately 4-5 months. Once the cloves are pulled apart, they tend to dry out much quicker.

• After removing the first clove, you probably have about 10 days to two weeks before the remaining garlic on the bulb begins to sprout.

• Humidity in a basement, root cellar or plastic bag –doesn’t work for this herb.

• Keep it away from potatoes, since garlic and onions emit gases that can cause rapid sprouting in spuds.

• Smaller heads store better and stay fresher than larger ones.

If you cook it minced, coarsely chopped or whole in olive oil before storing in the refrigerator, it can easily last a week. Do not ever store raw garlic in any form in uncooked oil. Raw garlic and oil will become contaminated with botulism very quickly.

Garlic’s an Excellent Companion Plant

There are many plants that are great companions to garlic. Tomatoes, cauliflower, broccoli, potatoes, spinach, lettuce, carrots, beets, sweet peppers, eggplant, kale, parsnips, cabbage, kohlrabi, dill, savory, chamomile, strawberries and fruit trees are all benefited when it is grown nearby.

Plant this wonderful herb everywhere as it increases the overall productivity of your garden.

Garlic Repels Pests

Garlic repels a variety of pests including; spider mites, aphids, ants, onion flies, cabbage loopers, Japanese beetles, fungus gnats and codling moths. It also discourages critters like gophers, rabbits, and deer.

Utilizing garlic means that you can often harvest successful garden crops without the need for chemicals in your garden.

Garlic’s Medicinal Benefits

Garlic should be a basic crop in every survival garden. It is a medicinal powerhouse with proven antibacterial, antimicrobial, antiviral and antifungal properties. These properties boost the immune system and improve overall health.

Be prepared in the event medicine becomes unavailable. See more gardening posts here. See my medicine cabinet post here.

Put Garlic Tincture In Your Medicine Chest~ A DIY Home Remedy

“The secret ingredient to every meal is love. And also garlic.” ~Michael Sorrentino

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