Get started with Garlic
While we enjoy the lazy days of summer, with our gardens in full bloom, and our kitchen busy with pickling, jamming and preserving, it’s time to start planning for your garlic crop. Garlic is a LONG crop, mine is often in the ground for just shy of 10 months. Here’s everything you need to know about planting garlic.
Hardneck vs Softneck
There are two types of garlic. Hardneck is better suited to colder climates. The bulbs produce fewer larger cloves, they are easier to peel and (my favourite part) they also produce garlicscapes. Garlicscapes are the immature flower buds of hardneck garlic, they are curly, and can be harvested in June & July. They are delicious pickled, in soups, or in eggs. Hardneck garlic should be cured, and can be stored for about 6 months. Softneck garlic is well suited to warmer climates, but I have grown it in my zone 2b/3 garden successfully. The heads have more cloves that hardneck, but they are smaller. You won’t get garlicscapes from softneck garlic, but you can braid the leaves, and they store for closer to a year.
Where to purchase
I like to order my garlic bulbs nice and early, I store them in a cool dry place until it’s planting time. There are lots of garlic growers in Alberta. Three I can recommend are:
The Garlic Ranch
Parkland Peonies
Blue Mountain Biodynamic Farms
Where to Plant
Garlic likes full sun and loose, well drained soil. In Alberta, many of us have dense, clay based soil - so it’s a good idea to work in some organic matter to your garlic bed before you plant. My new favourite thing to add to heavy clay soils is Sea Soil, which you can find at your local garden centre. I have planted garlic straight into heavy clay soil, it resulted in smaller bulbs that were really hard to clean.
Happy Spring Garlic Shoots
Timing
Garlic needs a cold period to grow properly, so you are going to plant your garlic in the fall. In Alberta, this is usually late September to early October. You want garlic in at least 4 weeks before a really hard frost ( it needs time to establish roots), but not so early that it starts to sprout before winter (if this happens, it’s not ideal, but you will most likely still get a garlic harvest the next year).
Planting
Ok, so the timing is right, you have your bulbs, it’s time to get them into the ground. Break each garlic head into cloves, and plant your cloves with the pointy side up. The bigger the clove, the bigger the head of garlic you’ll grow.
Planting Specs:
Row Spacing: Create rows that are 8-12 inches apart.
Bulb Spacing: 4-8 inches apart (most sources suggest 6“)
Depth: 3” - 4” deep, so there is at least 2 “ of soil on top of the clove (this deeper planting helps protect from a long winter).
You don’t need to water garlic after it’s planted in the fall. You can cover it with some mulch as winter approaches. Snow will also be a good insulator for the garlic.
Growing
Early summer garlicscapes
Garlic is very low maintenance. In the spring, you’ll start to see garlic shoots, mine usually appear in late April, or early May. Garlic needs about an inch of water a week if it’s dry, I find I’m not watering my garlic until about July. If you have hardneck garlic, you’ll want to harvest the scapes only (simply do this by snipping them off the plant) in June or July. If you don’t harvest the scapes, your bulbs will be smaller as the bloom takes energy away from the production of the bulb. I stop watering a few weeks before harvest.
Harvesting
You’ll know it’s time to harvest garlic when the leaves start turning yellow (look for about half to 3/4 of the leaves to be yellow). Expect this in August ( we harvested August 19th in 2019). Gently loosen the soil around the garlic, you don’t want to stab a garlic head with a space. Grasp the leaves of the garlic, and gently wiggle and pull until it comes out of the ground. If it’s not coming out, loosen the soil a bit more. Don’t wash the heads, we need to cure them next.
Curing
Garlic curing on a table
If you are going to store your garlic, it needs to be cured. You want to hang or lay your garlic in a warm, dry space. If you have softneck garlic you can braid the leaves, otherwise, just tie a few together with string. Don’t braid/tie too many together, you want the air to get to them. Now, hang the garlic in a warm, dry spot. We hang ours in our pantry, which gets heat from the kitchen. I also know folks who have outdoor spaces that are covered so they can hang them in the sun to cure. You can also dry garlic on a table (see photo). This process usually takes about 2 weeks. Now you can store the garlic in a cool, dry spot.
