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Garlic Planting Checklist

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testuser Published 2 days ago
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Garlic is one of the few crops you plant in fall and dig up the next summer. In places with a real winter, the cloves go in once the soil has cooled, usually several weeks before the ground freezes, so they grow roots before the cold and wait under mulch until spring. Your state’s extension service publishes a planting window for your area, and it is worth looking up before you buy.

This checklist runs from choosing the garlic and getting the bed ready through planting day, then the jobs in spring and summer up to harvest and curing.

Plant the biggest cloves you have. Each clove grows into one whole bulb, and a big clove gives a bigger bulb than a small one from the same head. The small ones are still good in the kitchen.

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  1. Look up the garlic planting window for your area — Your state or county extension service gives one, based on when the ground usually freezes.
  2. Choose hardneck or softneck garlic — Hardneck types handle cold winters better and send up scapes in early summer. Softneck types suit milder winters and keep longer in storage.
  3. Buy seed garlic from a garden center or seed supplier — Supermarket garlic may be a variety that does not suit your climate, and some is treated to slow sprouting.
  4. Pick a spot in full sun with soil that drains well — Cloves sitting in wet soil over winter can rot. Use a raised bed if the ground stays soggy.
  5. Avoid a bed that grew garlic, onions or leeks in the last few years — Rotating the bed keeps diseases of the onion family from building up in the soil.
  6. Clear the weeds and roots from the bed
  7. Dig in a layer of compost
  8. Break the heads into cloves on planting day — Leave the papery skin on each clove.
  9. Set aside the largest cloves for planting
  10. Plant each clove pointed end up, flat root end down — A clove planted upside down can still grow, but it tends to come up late.
  11. Set the cloves about 2 inches deep and 4 to 6 inches apart — Leave about a foot between rows so you can weed between them.
  12. Label each row with the variety and the date
  13. Water the bed if the soil is dry
  14. Cover the bed with a thick layer of straw or shredded leaves — Freezing and thawing can push cloves up out of the soil. Mulch evens that out, and it keeps weeds down in spring.
  15. Write down where and when you planted — Next year's rotation depends on it.
  16. In spring, pull the mulch back from the shoots once hard frosts have passed
  17. Weed often through spring — Garlic has few leaves and shallow roots, and it loses out to weeds quickly.
  18. Cut the scapes from hardneck garlic when they curl — The plant then puts more into the bulb, and the scapes are good to cook.
  19. Stop watering a couple of weeks before harvest
  20. Dig the bulbs when the lower leaves have turned brown — Loosen the soil with a fork first. Pulling by the stem can snap it off.
  21. Cure the bulbs somewhere dry, shaded and airy for a few weeks
  22. Save the best heads to plant next fall
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