How To Grow Garlic

Garlic is one of the easiest vegetables to grow, you can plant in January for a harvest in July/August. You can plant garlic outside in soil or in compost in 5 cm pots.

Step 1 is to buy a Bulb of Garlic - you can buy from the supermarket but organic is better as some supermarkets treat garlic bulbs with a bulb inhibitor which stops you growing new bulbs for it. So go for organic / farm garlic if you can.

Each Garlic bulb will produce 8 - 12 cloves each of which will be used to form a new plant, I would recommend 2 bulbs to start with, as this will provide more than enough garlic plants for most families.

Fill your 5cm pots with well watered compost, alternatively if you want ot plant in soil prepare an area where you have space to plant the cloves 6-8 inches apart.

Break open your garlic bulbs into individual cloves, removing as much of the dry waste as possible. Then plant one clove per pot, the tip of the garlic clove should be pointing upwards and be just visible above the compost.

Keep well watered as the garlic will grow very fast in the first few days with 2 inch leaf growth per day not uncommon. Keep in a sunny position.

Other than watering garlic is very, very simple to grow.

Harvesting - pull up one bulb and see how many paper like layers are around the bulb (these are called sheaths) you can peel off the bulb, if there are only three, harvest the garlic bulbs by gently pulling on the leaves and lifting with a trowel, if there are four or more layer then wait another couple weeks or until the leaves have turned brown.

Enjoy the fruits of your garlic growing! Find out more about Planting Garlic and Garlic Pests And Diseases

By Richard Allen -