Got Garlic?
Garlic has to be one of my favorite vegetables. I use it in almost everything and I almost always use more then the recipe asks for.
I love growing my own garlic and it’s very easy to do.
My Favorite Vegetables
Fall is the best time to plant garlic and it starts with a visit to your local grocery store.
Garlic is easily planted from cloves. Take the whole heads of garlic that you have purchased at your grocery store and separate out the individual cloves.
Chose a location in your vegetable garden that receives at least 6 hours of sunlight. If you do not have an existing vegetable garden, then amend your existing soil with compost and aged steer manure, mixed in well.
Space them approximately 6 inches apart.
Plant 2 inches deep, with the pointed side of each clove pointed upward and cover with soil.
Garlic like regular water, but do not let them become soggy.
They will soon send up green shoots. In cold climates, add a straw mulch over your garlic.
Freezing weather will cause the green shoots to turn brown, but they will grow back in spring.
Once the outer leaves begin to turn brown and droop, you can harvest your garlic.
Pull it up carefully and keep the green shoots attached. Remove any clumps of dirt, but do not clean the heads.
Put your newly harvested garlic in a warm, dry area out of sunlight to ‘cure’ for a few weeks. Then cut the shoots off.
Your garlic is now ready to cook with. Store your garlic out of sunlight. I keep mine in a bowl on a shelf in my laundry room.
So start growing your own garlic. You can spend the time they are growing selecting your favorite recipes that need garlic.
Noelle Johnson, aka, 'AZ Plant Lady' is a author, horticulturist, and landscape consultant who helps people learn how to create, grow, and maintain beautiful desert gardens that thrive in a hot, dry climate. She does this through her consulting services, her online class Desert Gardening 101, and her monthly membership club, Through the Garden Gate. As she likes to tell desert-dwellers, "Gardening in the desert isn't hard, but it is different."
I have grown garlic for years, to keep critters out of the garden…
I grew my best garlic ever this year – sometimes the bulbs are very small but with an intense flavour – this year they grew to the size of an egg, say. I think it depends of the size of the clove that you plant that makes the difference. I shall be planting this years cloves very soon – they are so easy aren't they.
I am trying garlic for the first time this year. In what month do you typically harvest yours? I will be interested to see if it repels the pesky woodchucks at all!
It is a cold (55F) rainy day. Time to look up what you and others have posted on blogs. Great catching up with you. You make the garlic growing seem so easy. One of these years I will do it. In the mean time – to the grocery store whenever I need it. Enjoyed the visit today. Jack