How to grow your own Garlic.

HOW TO PLANT GARLIC.

Fall is the time of year to plant out your garlic cloves to make sure they get adequate time to establish before Winter begins. Best practice is to plant certified seed garlic, which are bulbs of garlic that have been tested to make sure they are free from viruses. If you had a problem with your garlic crops having viruses last season, do not “seed save” your garlic bulbs/cloves to re-plant. Invest in purchasing new certified virus free seed garlic cloves. This investment will be well rewarded in a healthy and bountiful garlic crop with fat, juicy garlic cloves.

To plant your garlic, split each bulb into its individual cloves. When planting the cloves into the soil, you can either make a furrow (trench) or push each clove into the ground as deep as your thumb knuckle 3 to 4 cm (around 1 to 2 inches). Another good guide is to plant the cloves as deep as they are high. Make sure to plant your garlic clove pointy side up, the pointy side is where the new shoot will emerge. Depending on the type of garlic you planted you should leave 15 to 20 cm (around 6 to 7 inches) between each clove, and 20 to 30 cm (around 1 foot) between each row.

Personally I make a shallow furrow, and place each garlic clove around 15 cm apart, pointy side up. Once I have gone along and studded each row with the cloves, I get buckets of mushroom compost from my enormous pile that I keep near my veggie gardens. Making sure the mushroom compost is nicely “fluffed up” I jiggle the bucket to sprinkle a thick layer of fresh mushroom compost over the planted rows of garlic to cover the cloves. I don’t even press the freshly sprinkled compost down.

If the compost and garden beds were damp when I planted the cloves, I don’t “water in” the garlic cloves, this is so I avoid any risk of the garlic cloves going moldy or rotten before they have a chance to sprout and root. If it hasn’t rained in a few days after planting the garlic, then I do give the garlic bed a very light watering.

The past few years we have had light, but consistent rainfall during Autumn (Fall) and Winter, so I haven’t watered the garlic until the whether gets much warmer in late Spring. I should mention we live in a temperate zone, near the seaside, so have mild winters that rarely go below zero and never receive snow.

What is the best type of Garlic to grow

The best way to figure out which garlic to grow in your area is to try growing a few different varieties. I like to try growing the variety that I like to eat the most and then also try growing a few different varieties and see which type grows the best in my garden. We live in South Eastern Australia, so I planted Tasmanian Purple, Bluesky Creole, Flinders Island Purple and Early Purple. I found last season that Tasmanian Purple did the best in my garden, there may have been slightly varying differences between the garden beds I planted them in, but no matter the reason, Tasmanian Purple was still the winner – big fat juicy cloves, with beautiful purple skins – just stunning.

How much garlic should you plant.

You should plant as much garlic as you want to eat, of course this depends on balancing the amount of garlic you want to grow with how much space you have overall in your vegetable garden, whilst also allowing enough space to grow the other vegetables and herbs you also wish to grow.

Last season I had an aim of growing enough garlic so that I wouldn’t have to buy any from the grocery store. I fell a little short last year due to some garlic varieties not doing as well as other garlic varieties, and I did end up having to buy some garlic. So this year I planted out more cloves, across 1.2 x 4.8m (5.76m2) and only planted the one variety of garlic that performed the best for me last season, Tasmanian Purple.

This has lead to another issue, the garlic is utilizing one whole garden bed for the 4 to 6 months it will take for the bulbs to form. So this year I decided to try Companion Planting. Briefly, companion Planting is when you plant two different types of plants (usually vegetable or herb plants) together at the same time.

Companion planting with Garlic

Some of the best companion plants to plant in and around garlic are beans and tomatoes. Root crops, like carrots or potatoes, are not good companion plants for garlic, as they would compete for space under the ground and hinder proper garlic bulb formation.

How to companion plant garlic with beans

To plant beans as your companion plant with your garlic, make a small trench/furrow in between the rows of garlic plants. Place your bean seeds 10 to 15cm apart along the furrow, then cover with soil or compost. Give a light water to help give the beans the signal to begin growing (germinating).

When to plant companion beans with garlic

I plant my companion beans in between my garlic in Spring to coincide with the warmer weather (the optimum time to plant out your spring vegetables). I also was curious to test whether the ability of beans to fix nitrogen into the soil and make the nitrogen bioavailable, would produce garlic that had larger, juicier bulbs and greener foliage (note: beans are in the legume family and have the ability to fix nitrogen into the soil).

How to improve the health of your Garlic crop

The garlic is growing extremely well. I noticed the leaves of the garlic were a bit yellow in colour, so I topped the garden beds with a generous sprinkle of pelletized chicken manure. I love the pelletized chicken manure called “Rooster Booster” by Neutrog, as it is certified Organic, and the company invests a lot of time and money into scientific research to ensure their products are beneficial to the soil microbiology.

I also sprinkled some “Blood and Bone”. One week after I added Rooster Booster and Blood and Bone, the colour of the garlic leaves have improved and are now a lovely deep green colour, are broader and more sprightly.

The beans are just starting to emerge, but the newly emerged bean sprouts are being eaten by Woodlouse. I will have to set some of my Homemade Woodlouse traps or I will end up with no crop of beans this year.