Growing Garlic - from Allotment Vegetable Growing Advice and Guides

Growing Garlic - How to Grow Garlic

by John Harrison, author of Vegetable Growing Month by Month

Garlic - photo courtesy of Thompson and Morgan

Garlic

We think of garlic as a crop from those hot sunshine countries, but it grows well in the UK. Garlic is a member of the onion family.

To grow good garlic, you need good stock. There's no point in trying to grow from a bulb purchased in a supermarket. Chances are it's a Spanish variety bred for a warmer climates and it will not thrive in a British summer. You need to buy varieties suitable for our weather.

You can, however, grow from your own saved homegrown garlic if you want to save some money. Select the best bulbs and user larger cloves for the best results.

Types of Garlic

Garlic comes in two main types, hardneck or Rocambole garlic and softneck garlic. Softneck tends to store better. Varieties will vary in flavour, you just choose what suits you.

Elephant garlic is actually a perennial leek, and has a much milder flavour. Its cloves split up when it is dried, so elephant garlic does not store for very long.

Cultivating Garlic

Usually garlic does best planted in November although some varieties are suitable for spring planting. Because the garlic is going to be sitting in the ground all winter, you can get losses due to rot. A well-drained and cultivated soil will give the best results. A week or so before planting, give the soil a dose of a general-purpose fertiliser like growmore or preferably fish, blood & bone, which is slower to release. A couple of ounces per square yard is about right. Garlic doesn't need too rich a soil but it will do better with some nutrition.

Use a dibber, an old spade handle is ideal, to make holes around 4" deep and about 8" apart each way. Break the bulb into individual cloves, being careful not to damage them, and drop into the holes pointed side up. Fill with soil and more or less forget about them until spring.

Birds can be a problem when the shoots appear, pulling the garlic out of the ground. You may need to keep them off with netting or fleece until they're really established.

If you have a heavy clay soil, water logging is much more of a problem but just dib your hole a little deeper and put some grit and sand into the base of the hole. This will allow drainage and get your garlic through a wet winter.

You can start garlic off in 3" pots under glass, planting out in early spring when the shoots are showing but I think there is little if any benefit to this method, as long as you prepare the soil first.

In the spring, another dose of fertiliser will really bring them on although you really don't need to do much more than keep the plants weed free and water in the summer if dry.

The bulbs are harvested when the leaves begin turning yellow in midsummer. If you leave them too long, the cloves will split apart and storage will be a problem. Use a fork to dig them up carefully.

Sometimes the plants will throw up a flower spike or scape. Snip this off as soon as possible. These are actually quite nice snipped up small and used as a spring onion in a salad, but with that garlic tang. If you leave them, the plant puts energy into seed rather than fattening the cloves.

Allow them to dry off for a week or so before storing in a cool, dark, well-ventilated place, although wet garlic, freshly harvested, is prized by many chefs and can be used immediately.

Garlic Problems

Apart from the birds mentioned above, the worst problem affecting garlic is rust. Usually this isn't too much of a problem unless the plants are too close together or in a shady spot. You can use a spray like Dithane if it is a bad year with warm but wet weather that encourages mildews and rusts.

Recommended Varieties of Garlic

As with many things, what to grow will depend on your personal taste and some varieties may do better than others in your local. I've always done well with Solent Wight. You can take a look at a wide range of garlic on the site here: Garlic Varieties

Garlic growing on my plot in May 2008

Garlic Growing