Planting Garlic
There are not a ton of things I can plant right now in my zone (5b). But as we gear up for winter weather, we can plant garlic to harvest in the early summer.
I ordered my garlic from Annies Heirloom Seeds. I chose a sample pack with 4 different varieties but you can buy whatever kinds you want. You want to plant them in the ground 2 weeks before the first frost. We have had very warm and pleasant temps this fall so I hope I haven’t waited too long to plant these. I have put these in the ground prior to this post. If you are a little bit farther south than me, you will be fine and should go ahead and try to plant some, and if you are farther north, it’s likely too late but there’s always next year. I have seen people try to plant the garlic from the grocery store and I think it might work but you would have better success to order/buy planting garlic from a garden supplier.
There are a lot of tutorials out there for planting garlic but I just separate the cloves making sure the paper and the root end stay intact. If the cloves are very small, just use them for cooking and try to plant the larger cloves. Also any cloves where the paper came off or was loose, I just used for cooking. Never plant any cloves with mold on them or signs of disease. They won’t grow and you are introducing pathogens into your soil. Plant cloves about 6 inches deep and 6 inches apart. I just eyeball the spacing and I like to use this wooden marking stake as my hole digger.
Make sure you plant the cloves with the pointy part or top of clove facing up and the root bit facing down.
After I finished planting the cloves, I covered with a thick layer of mulch. The soil was already very moist from recent rain so I did not water in. We did get some rain after I planted as well. The mulch I used with just chopped up leaves we had picked up from our yard but you can use straw or compost. whatever is easiest/cheapest.
Only time will tell if I was successful with this. This garlic will be ready to harvest in early summer but hopefully there will be signs of success in the form of scapes in the spring.
Happy planting!
