growing Gorgeous Garlic!

Keep your seed garlic in a place with stable, cool (not cold) temperatures and moderate to low humidity, preferable in the dark. Basements, pantries, and garages work well. DO NOT refrigerate or freeze seed garlic. Store culinary garlic this way, too! 

Before planting, be sure to soil test your garden if possible, and amend it properly. Garlic is a heavy feeder! We add high quality compost and composted organic chicken manure fertilizer to our fields according to our soil test each fall. Wondering when to plant? In zone 4 north central WI, we typically plant around Halloween. It's best to have had a killing frost before planting, but don't wait til the ground is too frozen! You want the garlic to start growing roots before winter sets in, but not make tender green top-growth that will possibly winter kill.

Separate each head into cloves (leaving the paper skins on is typical but if they fall off, that's okay too). Take care not to break or cut the root plate section at the bottom of each clove--this is where new roots must grow from! Each individual clove becomes a new plant in spring. Determine your preferred spacing. In our 3ft wide raised beds, we plant garlic 4 rows across and 9 inches apart in row. 6-9inches apart is a typical spacing. Tuck the garlic into the ground with the growing tip facing up and the root plate down. Garlic should ideally be planted 2-5 inches deep depending on your mulch. Mulch helps keep garlic from desiccating in cold winter winds. We've used straw and chopped leaves with great success. We add several inches to the top of the soil. Some folks also plant into heavy duty plastic landscape fabric with holes cut/burned into it as a mulch alternative.  

In early spring when plants begin to emerge, check in to make sure your plants are able to successfully poke through the mulch you used. Sometimes straw mats together and even the toughest garlics need help poking through! Leave the mulch intact as much as you can to reduce weed pressure. Feel free to feed your garlic in the spring. We like to use dilute hydrolyzed liquid fish fertilizer. Keep garlic weeded and watered (if its a very dry year or in a raised bed). IMPORTANT: garlics form their flowering structure, scapes, in June in our climate. Be sure to remove the scapes to ensure the garlic makes a bulb. Scapes can be cut, but we just snap them off. They make a delicious garlicky treat! Once your garlic has made scapes, DO NOT fertilize it any more. Too much nitrogen at this point will cause the garlic to put on more green growth rather than focusing on making a bulb. 

Woohoo! You've made it to harvest! It's tricky sometimes to determine when garlic is ready, but typically you pull it when 4-5 green leaves are left (the rest have browned or yellowed) AND before it starts splitting apart in the ground. For us, harvest typically occurs within 3 weeks to one month of when the garlic makes scapes. This usually ends up falling around the end of July. If very wet weather is in the forecast, it's best to pull the garlic before it gets too much water on it or this extra moisture can cause poor curing. Leave the roots on your garlic to cure it out, but you have a couple choices for the tops. We like to leave our garlic plants fully in tact and tie them up in bundles with twine. We then hang them in a dark pole shed for about a month until the stalks are very dry. Some folks also cut stems to about 9 inches (or leave them whole) and then lay out the garlic on screen tables to dry. Keep your garlic out of the sun and in a place with good airflow during this time. Once the curing process is complete, garlic becomes fairly shelf-stable. Trim the roots to the desired length, clean off the outermost dirty bulb wrappers, and store as indicated above until you're ready to eat it or plant again! 

In the fall right before planting, you can soak your garlic in a diluted liquid fish fertilizer bath. This helps to give the cloves much needed nutrition to get through the winter. Additionally, you can also do a "cleaning" soak of the cloves in isopropyl alcohol or hydrogen peroxide (or vodka!) to help make sure the cloves start out clean and free of anything that might cause rot. We learned both of these procedures from Keene Garlic--if you search their website, you'll find detailed instructions for how to do this garlic soaking process! Thanks, Keene! 

One other thing that can give your garlic a boost is to top your bed with a nice layer of compost after planting but before mulching. This is an extra layer of organic matter and food for soil microorganisms, which all help us grow great garlic! 

Keeping garlic well weeded is essential to growing large heads! Also, in many years, natural rainfall is enough to keep garlic happily watered. However, in a very dry year or a tall raised bed, extra irrigation may be necessary. Just be sure not to water too close to harvest time.