How to Grow Garlic
If you have ever tasted fresh garlic, you will definitely want to learn how to grow garlic for yourself. It is no trouble at all to add garlic to a small home garden.
Preparing soil to grow garlic is quite easy. Make sure the soil has either been tilled or spaded to be six to twelve inches deep. Fertilize with manure and compost. Garlic prefers soil with a PH level of 6 or above. Use the biggest cloves and place them root end down so they are sticking up in the soil. Then cover them with an inch of soil. Garlic is best planted in the fall so that it has some roots grown before winter when it will lie dormant. Garlic likes moist soil but it doesn’t do well with a lot of water. If sprouts show above ground you must mulch with straw for the winter and take it off in the spring.
Garlic is susceptible to root rot and a variety of leaf diseases. Make sure that you start out with good seed stock. Make your soil as good as it can be and make sure you have prepared it to drain well. You can add a fertilizer (5-10-10) and/or manure every two weeks. Make sure to weed very well as garlic won’t sprout or grow well with other seedlings of any kind. If you are having a drought, be prepared to water garlic.
Because garlic is prone to disease, it is best to use new seed stock each year. If garlic gets very stressed it may stop producing little shoots and put all of its efforts into growing one large clove instead of the 8-10 little ones you are looking for. Find out what varieties of garlic grow best in your area as each kind is very dependent on weather and temperatures.
There are two kinds of garlic--common or hardneck. The common is what most people grow and the kind you find at the supermarket. The hardneck kind tastes like common garlic but it has a flowering stem and it does not have the layers of skin to peel away that you normally find on garlic. That makes it a cinch to peel but it also can leave the garlic clove unprotected from the elements . If you live in a cool to cold climate and are having trouble learning how to grow garlic of the common variety, the hardneck “rocombole” will usually produce the best in adverse conditions.
Knowing how to grow garlic also means knowing when it is the proper time to harvest. You should take the plants out of the ground when the top foliage has died off. Leaving them in the ground will not allow them to get any larger and might cause rot. If you are having a very wet season you should pull them out absolutely as early as possible and keep them in a covered place to dry out. For winter storage, garlic likes a cool, dry place.