I live in Alberta Canada. I plant mine 6 inches apart and about 4 inches down at the end of September or very early October and my garlic is hard neck garlic. My garlic grows very large and just one head of garlic fits in the palm of my hand. I've been doing this for about 15 years and every 2 or 3 years I throw in some composted sheep manure. Works like a charm.
Do you mulch? I was planning to plan 4 inches down & 4 inches apart.. don't know much space. This year wasn't big & doesn't taste anything special but this year I got the garlic from the farmer market. Hopefully it will have a. better flavor next year
@chrischen9589 no I don't mulch. I do cover the bed with black fabric so the feral cats can't mess up the garden and it helps keep the soil warmer to give the roots a chance to grow until we get a really hard frost that freezes the ground.
I agree with all of this 100%. I live in Sedona AZ and have been growing soft neck garlic in the same plot for 20 years. I usually grow 150 heads and my neighbors line up every year for their share. I plant the biggest cloves every year, 2" deep on Oct 5th (our anniversary). In two or three weeks most of them have broken the soil and by February they all have. I harvest about the last week of June, when the tops are almost completely brown. They are baseball sized and very strong tasting. Great video.
I am in Northwest Minnesota zone 3b and grow primarily hardneck garlic. You say soft neck garlic do not get scapes: I beg to differ. I get scapes on my softneck garlic every year. I have to laugh about the mistakes. According to this video I make most of them every year with great success. 🤣 I plant the larges cloves back every year and they don't go into the ground till the last weekend of October before Halloween. This puts me at roughly 2 weeks before freeze up. At the time of planting my soil is cold enough to make my hands extremely cold most years. I plant my garlic at between 3.5 and 4 inches deep and six inches apart in wide beds, five to six cloves wide by however long the beds are. I water them in real good and immediately cover with a couple feet of loose hay. I leave every bit of covering on my garlic all summer. In the spring my garlic is already grown a few inches above the covering by the time the snow melts off the beds. What I have found is when I do not have enough covering or no covering at all on my garlic beds the bulbs will stop growing in size as soon as the soil warms to around 74 degrees F. The closer to 60 degree soil temp the better for large bulbs. I water very little during the summer due to the amount of cover I keep on the garlic unless we end up with a full summer drought. My harvest window is typically the last week in July. Nearly every one of my garlic bulbs measure 3.5 inches in diameter or larger. I also plant my garlic in the same beds year after year. Every fall when prepping the beds for garlic planting I harvest what I grew in the beds (typically potatoes) between harvest and planting time of the garlic and turn in more compost prior to planting the garlic.
I don’t use much garlic. This year I’m trying a Memphis Agricenter farmer market gardener’s garlic that I bought. The tip I’ll use from you is picking the largest cloves every year. I have clay soil so I won’t plant deep. Thanks!
Last fall I planted 30 cloves of garlic. By late spring I had about a dozen plants. As time went on my garlic started to disappear. Critters ate all of it. I planted it in my garden with bone meal and compost. I have seed garlic coming and I'm planning on growing it in containers topped with hardware cloth.
I started growing garlic five or six years ago from some hard neck bought from Aldi here in the UK, which had started to sprout. Every year, I've kept the best two or three bulbs & use the biggest cloves for replanting. Gone from harvesting 30-40g bulbs to most being 60-90g this year. Another thing is, the garlic I plant in the polytunnel does much better than in outside beds, with little or no rust. Planted 3" from the outer wall means it takes up no space, so I can leave it to reach full maturity. Oh & there's no links on screen in the video - perhaps due to being in the UK. Can you put them in the video description?
Thank you for clarifying a few things for me. I live in Maine. I believe I'm in zone 6b. I think they recently changed it in my area. I was basically doing things right except for mulching. And I'm late on putting it in! Thar makes total sense to put it in now. I'll put it on tomorrow's to-do list! Thanks again!
Softneck garlic is not easier to peel. The bulbs have tighter paper coverings compared to hardneck, I often have to use a sharp knife to cut the paper off. With hardneck garlic the paper is much looser and easy to peel with fingers alone. Softneck garlic stores better for this reason.
I got a handy little tool from a garage sale. It's a silicone tube about 4 in. long. You put the clove in it and roll it back and forth. Paper comes right off!
Great Lesson! I didn't know about the garlic - specific nematode problem. How do we combat that nematode naturally & others? Is too much moisture creating a nematode problem?
I have yet to see a soft-neck variety that has fewer, larger, and easier peeling cloves than most hardneck varieties, so I'd be curious which varieties of softneck that you refer to. I've chosen a variety of softneck (Nootka Rose) to try this season only for the longer storage potential as I usually start running into deteriorating bulbs after 6-8 months of storage here in zone 6. I've always had good garlic growing luck by mulching after the shoots pop up a few inches, and I never remove it until I harvest, otherwise I'm always fighting weed pressure. So far garlic has by far been the easiest and most productive crop of most anything that I've attempted to grow. Thanks for all your tips!
Do u have a video on leek? I had an awful time with them....they looked strong and healthy and then they all dropped. Cut them down and they came back but then lost them again. Don't know what I'd do without all ur knowledge....thank you...
I have found 6 inch spacing to work very well for me. I grow all my garlic in 36 inch wide beds by how ever long the bed is on a 6 x 6 planting grid. Works great aside from a few scapes blending in with the leaf growth when harvesting scapes.
That's what i did in 1994 and will be planting cloves, from bulbs decended from that 1994 garlic purchase, come mid November. Was organic but i think key was that the farmer i bought from was local.
Can you tell something about growing garlic purely for green garlic stems? In China it's a super popular vegetable, stalk are rather tender and have nice garlicky flavour.
Those are the garlic scapes that are produced by hard neck garlic. It’s a thick stem that curls. They appear in the early part of June. The nice thing is you harvest the garlic scape and you still get garlic bulbs, it’s a two for one. Removing the scape sends all the energy to bulb production .
@@Terri_Stauffer That's another cool thing, but not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about young garlic greens in the pre-blooming stage. When you buy it, it very often still has it's roots and undeveloped bulb. It's similar to leek in appearance, but it's a garlic.
@@SimaShangde okay, I learned something knew. I looked it up and found it’s called green garlic. It’s the immature garlic in the spring (May) before it starts to bulb. Or you could plant cloves in spring and pull up in summer when you pull your garlic bulbs. They will not require cold stratification. Seems easy to go ahead and give it try. Sometimes in spring I have leftover garlic I haven’t cooked and Is starting to sprout, probably would make great green garlic. Gonna have to give it a try.
@@SimaShangde It's the same thing as planting normal garlic bulbs, just harvest them before they mature. And as your only going to harvest them early you can plant them very densely.
@@theredwriggler I'm sorry I do not know the variety. I was given the seed by a master gardener years ago. They have an actual seed head if I leave the scape. If I leave the seed, they do grow into bulbils.
@@Sylvie_M the flower heads turn into mini ‘bulbils’ which are like seeds. Mine are smaller than sesame seeds. Is that what yours looks like? Bulbils and bulbs are different. I think we are talking about the same thing
Growing crops in the winter was what Stalin had his agriculture czar come up with as a planting schedule and the implementation of the plan was the start of one of the worst famines in the history of the world. Look it up, fascinating tale of how evil man can be to man.
I live in Alberta Canada. I plant mine 6 inches apart and about 4 inches down at the end of September or very early October and my garlic is hard neck garlic. My garlic grows very large and just one head of garlic fits in the palm of my hand. I've been doing this for about 15 years and every 2 or 3 years I throw in some composted sheep manure. Works like a charm.
Do you mulch? I was planning to plan 4 inches down & 4 inches apart.. don't know much space. This year wasn't big & doesn't taste anything special but this year I got the garlic from the farmer market. Hopefully it will have a. better flavor next year
@chrischen9589 no I don't mulch. I do cover the bed with black fabric so the feral cats can't mess up the garden and it helps keep the soil warmer to give the roots a chance to grow until we get a really hard frost that freezes the ground.
I agree with all of this 100%. I live in Sedona AZ and have been growing soft neck garlic in the same plot for 20 years. I usually grow 150 heads and my neighbors line up every year for their share. I plant the biggest cloves every year, 2" deep on Oct 5th (our anniversary). In two or three weeks most of them have broken the soil and by February they all have. I harvest about the last week of June, when the tops are almost completely brown. They are baseball sized and very strong tasting. Great video.
This is the best gardening channel. Thanks! Which garlic varieties do you plant?
Red Russian garlic.
ELEPHANT
Thank you, sir! Just bought my garlic from MIGardner and getting ready to plant both hard and soft neck in zone 6!
I am in Northwest Minnesota zone 3b and grow primarily hardneck garlic.
You say soft neck garlic do not get scapes: I beg to differ. I get scapes on my softneck garlic every year.
I have to laugh about the mistakes.
According to this video I make most of them every year with great success. 🤣
I plant the larges cloves back every year and they don't go into the ground till the last weekend of October before Halloween. This puts me at roughly 2 weeks before freeze up.
At the time of planting my soil is cold enough to make my hands extremely cold most years.
I plant my garlic at between 3.5 and 4 inches deep and six inches apart in wide beds, five to six cloves wide by however long the beds are. I water them in real good and immediately cover with a couple feet of loose hay. I leave every bit of covering on my garlic all summer.
In the spring my garlic is already grown a few inches above the covering by the time the snow melts off the beds.
What I have found is when I do not have enough covering or no covering at all on my garlic beds the bulbs will stop growing in size as soon as the soil warms to around 74 degrees F.
The closer to 60 degree soil temp the better for large bulbs.
I water very little during the summer due to the amount of cover I keep on the garlic unless we end up with a full summer drought.
My harvest window is typically the last week in July.
Nearly every one of my garlic bulbs measure 3.5 inches in diameter or larger.
I also plant my garlic in the same beds year after year.
Every fall when prepping the beds for garlic planting I harvest what I grew in the beds (typically potatoes) between harvest and planting time of the garlic and turn in more compost prior to planting the garlic.
I don’t use much garlic. This year I’m trying a Memphis Agricenter farmer market gardener’s garlic that I bought. The tip I’ll use from you is picking the largest cloves every year. I have clay soil so I won’t plant deep. Thanks!
Last fall I planted 30 cloves of garlic. By late spring I had about a dozen plants. As time went on my garlic started to disappear. Critters ate all of it. I planted it in my garden with bone meal and compost. I have seed garlic coming and I'm planning on growing it in containers topped with hardware cloth.
I started growing garlic five or six years ago from some hard neck bought from Aldi here in the UK, which had started to sprout.
Every year, I've kept the best two or three bulbs & use the biggest cloves for replanting.
Gone from harvesting 30-40g bulbs to most being 60-90g this year.
Another thing is, the garlic I plant in the polytunnel does much better than in outside beds, with little or no rust.
Planted 3" from the outer wall means it takes up no space, so I can leave it to reach full maturity.
Oh & there's no links on screen in the video - perhaps due to being in the UK.
Can you put them in the video description?
I
Thank you for clarifying a few things for me. I live in Maine. I believe I'm in zone 6b. I think they recently changed it in my area. I was basically doing things right except for mulching. And I'm late on putting it in! Thar makes total sense to put it in now. I'll put it on tomorrow's to-do list! Thanks again!
Very helpful. Thank you for sharing your experience, greatly appreciated.
Some of you ideas really make sense! Must keep that in mind.
Thanks for your no nonsense instructions !
SO happy to find an expert in my zone! Thank you for your videos
fantastic common sense tips - thank you
Great tutorial! Many thanks for sharing.
Thanks I love growing garlic.
Such a nice man, and a great video. Thank you so much!!!
Great tips. I was just wondering: to mulch or not to mulch? Will follow your advice. Makes sense to me👍
Softneck garlic is not easier to peel. The bulbs have tighter paper coverings compared to hardneck, I often have to use a sharp knife to cut the paper off. With hardneck garlic the paper is much looser and easy to peel with fingers alone.
Softneck garlic stores better for this reason.
I got a handy little tool from a garage sale. It's a silicone tube about 4 in. long. You put the clove in it and roll it back and forth. Paper comes right off!
Hey Gerald what you doing on this channel so you are well versed in agriculture great job
Thank you!
Thank you
Great Lesson! I didn't know about the garlic - specific nematode problem. How do we combat that nematode naturally & others? Is too much moisture creating a nematode problem?
I have yet to see a soft-neck variety that has fewer, larger, and easier peeling cloves than most hardneck varieties, so I'd be curious which varieties of softneck that you refer to. I've chosen a variety of softneck (Nootka Rose) to try this season only for the longer storage potential as I usually start running into deteriorating bulbs after 6-8 months of storage here in zone 6. I've always had good garlic growing luck by mulching after the shoots pop up a few inches, and I never remove it until I harvest, otherwise I'm always fighting weed pressure. So far garlic has by far been the easiest and most productive crop of most anything that I've attempted to grow. Thanks for all your tips!
Lot of good information. I think I have nematodes😯
Great tips, thanks! Do you also have a video about plant onions in the fall?
Do u have a video on leek? I had an awful time with them....they looked strong and healthy and then they all dropped. Cut them down and they came back but then lost them again.
Don't know what I'd do without all ur knowledge....thank you...
Great video…thanks for sharing
Ok so what’s optional spacing garlic plants? I hear 4-6 in I grow mine in a 30in by 10 or 15 feet.
I have found 6 inch spacing to work very well for me. I grow all my garlic in 36 inch wide beds by how ever long the bed is on a 6 x 6 planting grid.
Works great aside from a few scapes blending in with the leaf growth when harvesting scapes.
I remember getting bulbils on soft neck garlic.
Thank you.
Thanks
I found if you plant garlic in spring they do not split into cloves just stay like a small onion. Still good to eat though
Can you use organic store bought garlic?
That's what i did in 1994 and will be planting cloves, from bulbs decended from that 1994 garlic purchase, come mid November. Was organic but i think key was that the farmer i bought from was local.
Hmmm.. you dont want to bring nematodes into your garden…. But they are already in everyone’s garden!
There are many types though, you don't want these SPECIFIC nematodes 🧐
I’m in zone seven and I actually wait until almost Thanksgiving, because otherwise they put on way too much growth here before winter.
Good to know. I'm in Texas. 8A. This would be my problem 😅
Most garlic in store are soft neck and will have a hard time getting threw the winter in northern areas. Hard neck ARE beter in northern areas.
Can you tell something about growing garlic purely for green garlic stems? In China it's a super popular vegetable, stalk are rather tender and have nice garlicky flavour.
Those are the garlic scapes that are produced by hard neck garlic. It’s a thick stem that curls. They appear in the early part of June. The nice thing is you harvest the garlic scape and you still get garlic bulbs, it’s a two for one. Removing the scape sends all the energy to bulb production .
@@Terri_Stauffer That's another cool thing, but not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about young garlic greens in the pre-blooming stage. When you buy it, it very often still has it's roots and undeveloped bulb. It's similar to leek in appearance, but it's a garlic.
Are they maybe planting the little bulbils? They take years to develop a full sized bulb and apparently look like grass the first year.
@@SimaShangde okay, I learned something knew. I looked it up and found it’s called green garlic. It’s the immature garlic in the spring (May) before it starts to bulb. Or you could plant cloves in spring and pull up in summer when you pull your garlic bulbs. They will not require cold stratification. Seems easy to go ahead and give it try. Sometimes in spring I have leftover garlic I haven’t cooked and Is starting to sprout, probably would make great green garlic. Gonna have to give it a try.
@@SimaShangde It's the same thing as planting normal garlic bulbs, just harvest them before they mature. And as your only going to harvest them early you can plant them very densely.
I got store garlic to sprout, just not produce much.
Please show us your results.
Why would you use bone meal on alliums? It's not even a flowering vegetable plant. Even if there's a theory, I'm curious how that would originate.
My purple hard neck garlic makes seed.
Do you know what variety? And are they actual bulbils or seeds?
@@theredwriggler I'm sorry I do not know the variety. I was given the seed by a master gardener years ago. They have an actual seed head if I leave the scape. If I leave the seed, they do grow into bulbils.
@@Sylvie_M do they look like the size of sunflowers? All hardneck goes to ‘seed’ per se with the scape.
@@theredwriggler nope. regular hardneck garlic. you asked about bulbils. how would they form bulbils without seed first?
@@Sylvie_M the flower heads turn into mini ‘bulbils’ which are like seeds. Mine are smaller than sesame seeds. Is that what yours looks like? Bulbils and bulbs are different. I think we are talking about the same thing
Bulbils only take a couple years to be full size.
Whoo no mistakes yet lol
Growing crops in the winter was what Stalin had his agriculture czar come up with as a planting schedule and the implementation of the plan was the start of one of the worst famines in the history of the world. Look it up, fascinating tale of how evil man can be to man.
Big cloves don't make bigger garlic 🧄 cloves.
@competentsalesusa ummmm...yeah they do.
How did we cultivate these large bulbs we grow then?
Wrong, scientific studies are available proving this.
@@PolygonSwan
Through selective planting. It’s science, not brain surgery.
@@barryc9115replanting garlic cloves is propagating a genetic clone. Selective breeding only works on cross pollinating seeds
How about organic garlic from store?
Thanks!
Thank you.