Garlic is a super easy to grow crop and requires very little space in the garden. The best part of growing garlic is, you can use individual cloves broken off from whole bulb to plant and each clove will multiply in the ground, forming a new bulb that tastes great. Have you missed planting garlic in the last fall season? Don’t worry, try planting it in spring! You might not get large cloves like before, but you can still enjoy the mild flavor of green garlic. Let’s see the whole planting process of garlic in this article.
How To Plant Garlic In Spring:
Go to local garden centre to get some garlic bulbs or order them online.
Prepare Your Garden Bed:
Select the area where it gets receives 6-8 hours of sunlight per day Wait, until the soil has drained and thawed. For testing, form a handful of soil in to a ball and then tap it with your fingers. If you feel it crumbles apart easily, it’s time to plant. If it holds firm, wait for some more time to make the soil to dry out more. Or you can use well prepared raise bed for growing garlic.
Use The Best Garlic You Have Or Available:
Great garlic comes from great bulbs, so choose the best ones that you can. We know, it might be tempting to cook the best bulbs of garlic from your supply and plant the left over, but believe me it’s worth it to sacrifice the large and best cloves for planting.
If you can’t find any in your home, there are grocery stores to get the best ones. And don’t skip growing garlic just because you can’t get your hands on seeds.
Prepare The Soil Well:
Garlic grows well in loose, well worked soil. Prepare your soil deeply, remove stones from the top 6 inches of the soil and add several inches of good quality compost and thoroughly work it before planting.
Planting Garlic:
Planting garlic is absolutely simple, all you need to do is separate cloves and space them four to six inches apart. Make sure the rows are spaced one foot apart. Now, plant the cloves with the pointed end up and the blunt end down. Push each clove 1-2 inches in to the ground and firm the soil around it. Finally water the bed or soil if it is dry.
Caring For Garlic After Planting:
If you are planting garlic in fall season, make sure to pile several inches of mulch over the bulbs to help insulate it over the winter. In spring season, you can skip the layer of mulch, still it benefits from thin, even layer of straw or other mulch if you have some. It helps in retaining moisture and slightly moderates the temperature of bed, helping to give it a good start.
When the leaves begin to grow, feed your plant with good fertilizer to encourage its healthy growth. In late spring season, garlic varieties produce flower stalks that have small bulbils. Cut them off, it will insure that all of the food that plant produces will go in to the garlic bulb itself and not the clusters. Probably, in the month of June, plant stop producing leaves and begin to form bulbs. This is the time, you should remove remaining mulch and stop watering the plant. Garlic stores better when the soil around the plant is dry enough to touch.
Harvesting Garlic:
Garlic is ready in mid-summer or around the end of July. Once you see the lower leaves turning in to yellow color, you’re getting close. A good rule of thumb to harvest garlic is when the lower leaves of the plant turn in to brown color. Waiting too long to harvest won’t give you large cloves of garlic. So, harvest them at the right time to get the best ones.
Storing Spring Garlic:
After harvesting, leave them in a warm and dry place by trimming the tops off an inch or two above the bulb. Store garlic in a cool, dark and dry place, never store them in fridge.
Hope, these tips help you to have healthy harvest of garlic bulbs this spring season. Happy planting!