Growing Garlic

Garlic is a great crop to grow in your home garden, as local organic garlic is a high-value vegetable, it’s easy to grow, and the resulting harvest is much tastier than the grocery store alternative!

Garlic is planted between mid-October and mid-November – late enough to prevent any early above-ground sprouting before winter but early enough to ensure that the cloves will properly vernalize (freeze in the winter and then thaw in the spring) to trigger germination in the spring. If you plant your garlic correctly in the fall, it can be one of the easiest and most delicious vegetables to maintain and harvest next summer.

How to Plant Garlic

• Find an ideal garden spot to plant your garlic. The garlic bulbs need a well-draining, full-sun location to fully size up next summer. Make sure to plant your garlic in a different area than where the garlic grew this year to prevent nutrient imbalances in any one place.
• Once the weather forecast is ideal, prepare the soil. Garlic likes 6-8″ of loose, fertile soil with a slightly acidic pH (6.0-7.0).
• To prepare the soil:
  • Use a garden fork to loosen the soil to a depth of at least 6″ and incorporate 2″ of aged compost into the loosened soil.
  • Mound the soil to ensure proper drainage so the garlic bulbs don’t rot.
  • Check the pH after applying the compost to ensure it is not too acidic – add lime if you need to reduce acidity, and add sulphur powder to increase acidity.
  • Note that pH is often artificially high when the ground is cold, so you likely want to apply lime if the pH level is below 6.3.
• Plant the garlic by separating the bulbs into individual cloves with skins still on for protection.
• Plant each clove 4″ to 6″ deep and at least 6″ apart. I plant 4″ deep when growing in-ground and 6″ deep in containers.
• Plant your garlic cloves with the tip pointing to the sky and then cover them with more compost, tamping it down afterwards to prevent air pockets.
• Once the bed is planted, cover it with a thick layer of straw (not hay!) or disease-free leaf litter to stabilize the soil temperature over the winter.

Garlic Growing Tips

• Garlic will generally size up more when planted in-ground than in containers. However, you can partially offset this by supplementing container-planted garlic with additional phosphorus next spring and summer.
• Planting larger cloves will lead to larger bulbs, although you can partially offset this by using more compost on smaller cloves.
• In the spring, removing some or all of the straw when all risk of frost has passed will warm the soil earlier and give your garlic a head start on the growing season.
• Keep your garden beds well-weeded in the summer to minimize the competition for nutrients.
• Cut back on watering the garlic a few weeks before harvest – this concentrates the flavour.
• Harvest your garlic bulbs once the bottom four leaves have dried up, as the bulbs will not size up after that point.  
• Enjoy!