Growing Great Garlic

Reader Contribution by Keba M. Hitzeman
Published on January 13, 2021
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The bulbs that “made the grade” for planting. Photos by Keba M. Hitzeman

We are big fans of garlic on the farm. Until recently, we would purchase our winter supply from a local farmer friend in one of those pretty garlic braids. It was good hardneck garlic, full of flavor and a bit of heat. He grows many rows of the stuff, enough for his family, plus extra to sell at the virtual farmer’s market, and I got to thinking about how difficult it would be to grow it myself. The answer: not very difficult at all!

Hardneck vs Softneck Garlic

In the few years that I’ve been growing our own garlic, I’ve learned a lot. One of the first things was the differences between garlic types. There is hardneck garlic, which has the garlic cloves arranged around a central flower stalk, and softneck garlic, where the cloves are jumbled together, and there is no central stalk. I found that the large hardneck cloves peel easier than the smaller softneck cloves, which was the biggest selling point on planting my own hardneck garlic. Peeling 8 to 10 small cloves for one recipe definitely taxed my patience.

After settling on hardneck garlic, I started buying as much of their garlic as I could get my hands on. Large cloves will grow large bulbs, so I only saved the largest three cloves from each bulb, leaving plenty for our cooking and eating over the winter. I decided to plant this year’s crop in one of my raised beds. It has the best and softest soil and is protected from the chickens, which is very important since they will eat just about everything green they can find during the winter.

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