Garlic: A Plant to Love

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If you live in a more Southern area, where winter frosts are nonexistent or mild, consider the softnecks – creoles, artichokes, silverskins. If you live in a cold climate, where winters are severe, first try a hardneck – a rocambole or a porcelain. Now it’s not that you can’t grow a softneck in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, only that you might have better luck with a hardneck.

Garlic-growing guru Ron Engeland, author of Growing Great Garlic, says there are approximately 450 types of garlic commonly grown across the world. But a 2004 New York Times article attempted to poke a hole in the garlic grower’s entire belief system, telling us that botanical researchers in Colorado found that all garlic boils down to pretty much the same genetic thing. To be precise: On a DNA level, there are only six types of garlic, not 450. Try telling that to my tongue.

And, as for that stuffy New York Times ruining all our fun? CBS News Correspondent Morley Safer once said, “You can never have enough garlic. With enough garlic, you can eat the New York Times.”

Get growing

Garlic does not produce a true botanical seed, so you don’t plant garlic seeds. Instead, most garlic is planted from cloves broken off the main garlic bulb.

Take the bulb of garlic – yes, you can even plant the bulb you buy at the grocery store – and break it up into its individual cloves. Keep the large- and medium-sized cloves for planting; squash the little ones into your soup. As a general rule, big bulbs come from big cloves.

Plant your garlic somewhere between September 15 and November 15. Some research has shown bulb size increases with plantings in September and October rather than later, but even here in our cold climate, we get large 3-inch bulbs with early November plantings. More than once, we have found ourselves behind on farm work and end up planting in the season’s first snowstorm.

With some softnecks, we have had luck planting as soon as the ground thaws in the spring, but it’s generally safe to say spring plantings of garlic are rarely successful. Garlic requires a period of “vernalization,” which means it needs several weeks of dark and cold in order to get growing. Spring planting typically does not provide enough, and the garlic won’t bulb out properly.

Plant cloves 2 or 3 inches deep. We use a British tool called a “dibble.” (Imagine the fun we have dibbling! We dibble until we drop!)

The rules say you can plant anywhere from 3 to 12 inches apart – somewhere around 6 inches between cloves is probably best. Rows should be about 12 inches apart.

Fertilization? You can apply some well-aged manure and compost, if your soil is deficient or hard. But garlic is not finicky – it grows well with just about any food, and it will grow in just about any soil that isn’t too compacted. We have found some response to an application of kelp meal or Yum Yum Mix (www.SoilMender.com), perhaps due to the mineral content of these fertilizers. Garlic actually contains, pound for pound, more minerals than nearly any other vegetable. So you can make your own call about what to put on your garlic bed, based on your soil conditions.

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