Probably one of the easiest crops to grow, certainly one of the easiest fall crops to grow is garlic. I’ve grown garlic for 10 straight seasons now from the same stock I originally planted a decade ago. The trick to growing garlic successfully is in understanding its life cycle. Once you grasp its basic needs to complete the planting, growing, maintenance, and harvest of garlic, it’s actually quite simple. So today let me show you how to grow the most successful garlic you’ve ever grown, regardless of where you live or what you’re growing in, and it starts right now.
**Preparing The Garlic:**
The path to a successful crop of garlic is based on preparation, both the preparation of the garlic itself as well as the pot, container, or bed that you’re going to be growing in. Let’s start with the easy one and prep the garlic. Prepping the garlic is so easy; it’s 95% ready to plant already. So I know for many of you that have done this a thousand times before, this part is going to be a little bit redundant, but if you’ve never grown garlic, it’s important to know the life cycle of the garlic. Next year’s garlic crop is grown by taking the cloves from this year’s bulb and overwintering them fully planted. Each clove of garlic has everything it needs to grow into a full bulb of six to 14 new cloves for next summer. Our job is to simply remove the outer layer of paper only; this paper layer is what essentially holds the bulb together. Once we remove that outer paper sheath, we can then separate the individual cloves for planting. It’s important to note here that the garlic cloves themselves also have a paper coating; don’t remove this, leave that layer intact. It’s pretty easy stuff, and most bulbs will give you around eight individual cloves. Let’s go ahead and zip through another one so you can see it again. This one seems a bit smaller with a few less cloves, same process though. Try not to force the garlic apart too much; if one clove feels really stuck, move around the bulb and find one that’s easier; eventually, they’ll all come loose. This bulb only had six cloves, albeit nice plump ones. Pretty easy stuff right? So with the garlic prep, let’s go ahead and set up the area with which we’re going to grow it. I grow garlic in both containers and raised beds, and each is done a little bit differently. So let’s go ahead and look at container garlic first. Garlic isn’t too picky about container size; it’s all about the spacing. Anything that drains well and is at least six inches deep is perfectly fine. I love to grow my garlic in four-foot herb planters, so I’m first going to grab a few off the wall for our planting. These planters are just built for garlic, and having about 40 inches of growing space lengthwise means I can get about 10 plants in each. I line them with newspaper for every new planting to help prevent the soil from spilling out the bottom; it’s great because it lets the water through but not the soil, perfect for container garlic. I plant them a bit in reverse by first filling them with two to three inches of fresh compost. You can put your compost on top, no problem at all, but I find it works better as a base with your premium potting mix on top. So we will talk about the soil that we’re going to be using to fill all of our garlic containers with is the same soil that we’re going to be using to plant out the garlic beds. You can buy your own potting container mix from the store, and it’ll work perfectly fine; I make my own, and I’ll throw a link to that in the description below. Essentially, garlic needs a loose, light, well-drained, pH-neutral soil mix, so if you can make that yourself, great; if you have to buy it, well, that’s great too. There is one thing that I do extra, however, and that is I add about five percent sand. Garlic really likes good drainage, so adding a few cups of sand to your mix is highly recommended. Mix it all up nicely, and we’re ready to plant.
**Container Planting:**
The best way to plant container garlic is to simply fill your container all the way to the top and then take each clove and push them down, spaced accordingly. If you’re using the right soil mixture, this should be a cinch. Potting and container soil mixes are a dream to work with because they’re so light. Filling up your planter boxes takes no time at all and even less effort. I will say though that it’s a good thing that garlic is quite shallow-rooted and that we can use such low planters; otherwise, filling these guys could get quite expensive. Perfect scenario with our container garlic: when the planters are full, you’re going to want to compress them down about 20 percent to really pack that soil mix in. Go ahead and add a little more mix after to bring that level back up again. Garlic cloves have a top and a bottom to them; the roots come out the bottom obviously, but unlike most seeds, garlic bulbs have difficulty reorienting themselves after planting. So ensure that you’re planting them root and down. Now with your garlic ends root and down, simply bury them in that soil mixture about an inch deep. Space them three to four inches apart and work your way down your preferred containers; really ensure that those tips are buried; the shoots are going to find their way to the surface no problem, don’t worry. So as you can see, the actual planting of these guys is lightning fast; it’s all predicated on the preparation. The same thing goes with the raised beds, which we’ll see in a minute, but everything you do to set these guys up is what makes the planting so easy. Now I’ve got 32 more of these guys to do; I’m gonna go ahead, do those right now, and then we can talk about the final steps of setting these guys up for the long winter. Actually, before we do that, let me show you what it would look like if we potted up the garlic in a regular pot or container like this. Same thing using a pot, fill it up all the way, compress it down to pack the soil in, and then top it off. With round pots like this, I work my way around the circumference and space the garlic about three to four inches apart; and you’re going to want to keep it about two inches away from the sides of the pot. It’s probably a little bit tight, but I’m gonna go ahead and squeeze one right in the center; again, make sure all the garlic clove tips are buried.
**Mulching:**
The final steps that we do when planting garlic in containers is much the same as any other crop that we do at the farm; it’s always mulching and watering. But given the circumstances of time of year, we’re heading into winter very, very quickly here, and we’re planting a brand new bulb that hasn’t sprouted yet, so this step is ultra-important. Almost all the
organic mulches work very well with garlic; you can use straw, grass clippings, shredded leaves, or combinations of all of them. Lay it on thick, at least two inches; this is going to be the garlic’s blanket all winter long. Your mulch will help to mitigate the extreme temperature swings as well as to prevent moisture loss or the reverse, too much moisture. Don’t skimp here; the mulch layer can be the difference between a good garlic crop and a great one. Give your planters a good soaking, and you likely won’t have to water again until the spring. If you’re pressed for space, there’s no reason that you couldn’t easily grow hundreds of bulbs of the most epic organic garlic purely in containers alone. Go ahead and put the planters back in their permanent spot and wait for next summer’s harvest; it’s just that easy. This 10-foot wall of just four herb planters will house 40 bulbs of garlic and still be planted after summer harvest with fresh herbs for the rest of summer.
**Raised Beds:**
Alright, so planting and growing garlic in containers is pretty straightforward, so let’s move on to preparing an established raised bed or plot to grow some epic garlic. The first step to growing garlic in raised beds, whether you grow no-till style or not, is unequivocally to clean and prepare the bed. If you’re observing no-till methods, cut all weeds off right at the root collar and level the old mulch lightly with a hard rake. End of summer cleaning is always the most labor-intensive, but the no-dig method of gardening certainly mitigates that work, so it’s not the prettiest; it never really is this time of year, but now is when the magic happens with your beds all cleaned and prepped, let’s make our garlic rows. Spacing rules still apply, three to four inches between each bulb and two to three inches from the sides. If you’re growing in a raised bed using that same potting mix, simply lay down a two-inch or more thick row. If you have the space like I do here, put in another row; I do try to have about six to eight inches of space in between rows, so keep that in mind. Lay them down right on top of that old mulch; simply no need to dig here, why make work for yourself when it’s so unnecessary? I’m doing an 8-foot bed, and I usually get about 20 to 24 cloves in the center of each row, pretty awesome use of space for a bed that would otherwise lie dormant all winter. Again, plant your cloves root end down only; now you see that I’m not really burying them; this is where the plot or raised bed planting differs from the containers. Our two-inch row of new soil isn’t enough to bury these guys, so for this step, we’re content with simply setting up the cloves with the correct orientation. As before, it goes really fast, and an entire bed won’t take but a few minutes. Now, taking that same potting mix, go ahead and bury the rows one to two inches deep is perfect. I admit it is an extra step, but doing it this way ensures that we can still observe no-dig practices; the time consumed is a little bit more but the labor involved is quite which really is the motto of no-dig gardening. Extra care but not really extra work. With the rows all done, we can continue on the process as before and start mulching; really lay it on nice and thick here, trust me, it’ll serve your garlic well. I cover the whole bed and not just the rows, but if you’re conserving mulch for whatever reason, you can start with covering the rows first and then fill in the rest of the bed with whatever you have left. As with the container garlic before, finish off your planting with the watering to end all waterings; really soak them good here.
**Recap:**
timing. In relation to time, here’s the obligatory recap that took too long to watch: To prepare your garlic, peel off only the outer layer of paper before separating each clove. Using a preparing blend that has an unbiased pH, is very much depleted, and is genuinely free, you can now start establishing the garlic in your compartment, pot, or raised bed. Garlic gets laid out something like about a month and a half before your most noteworthy fall ice date and around one to two deadheads underneath the soil surface. Space those cloves three to four inches separated to give them space to develop and try to mulch with your #1 free natural combination. Your garlic will be ready for the winter and subsequent harvest next summer with just a little watering. Garlic truly is a set it and fail to remember it kind of harvest, which is in many cases what we want this season both for our bodies and our psyches.
