How To Grow Garlic 14 Steps (With Pictures & Video)

Now traditionally garlic is always planted on the shortest day of the year so June the 21st and it's harvested six months later on December the 21st. But we don't have to stick to this anymore in the warmer parts of the country. You can plant garlic anytime from May right the way through to August, and in colder parts of the country you might want to get your crop in in late autumn because if the ground is too hard in the middle of winter you won't be able to get your garlic in possibly to live in early spring.

Now garlic planting is really easy this beds been prepared.     It's been composted, it's all ready to go all you need is a hand and a thumb so the rule of thumb with garlic is that you plot your clothes about a hands length apart and roughly a thumbs length deep you don't want to get your thumb dirty you get a stick and you can mark it off like this the other rule is that you plant a bulb of garlic its own height deep in the ground in any event as long as it's not too deep it's going to grow so this is what's called a soft net variety it's got good flavor and you can plat the fists when they ripen and most of these cloves are big enough for planting so I'm just going to pull them out and we will position and plant these but I've also got a bit of a treat in here if you think Moe is a good-looking girl it close check these guys out this is what's called elephant garlic now it's actually related to a leek and these are going to produce some absolutely massive fist garlic still has a reasonably good flavor so I'm going to plant some of that at the back just for fun and games and boasting that will go over here now because this pigs been really nicely dug I don't want to compact it garlic lights good draining sauce up but a board here when I stand on this it's going to spread my load we go I'm excited about this pointy end up bottom end down roots come out of there shoots come out of there and then I just spin the board meter there and we'll place some of this stuff now I'm thinking a hands length between each clove on all sides so here we go thing is if you put plants too close to each other because you get really really excited about how much you're going to grow in the end you don't get as much back for your effort because if they're too close they compete for nutrients and for water and you just get less productive plants so it is well worth thinking about you're planting distance and kind of sticking to it so remember pointy end up fat end down that's where the roots come out and that's where the shoots come out now if you planted your garlic and later awesome in a colder area it probably won't move much until the soil starts to warm on the other side of winter but if it's reasonably warm when you're planting it then you can expect to see shoots within a couple of weeks now when you've enriched your soil properly you can pretty much leave your garlic to itself although if you're really keen on a bumper crop you can dress the soil around your garlic with some blood and bone meal every month if you're a vegetarian and blood and bone meals not your bag then you could use worm compost or possibly some sheep pellets but you might need to use it a little bit more often you could also feed your garlic as well once it's got foliage and it's starting to shoot you could feed it with liquid worm juice and it's a hardneck variety it may well put up a flower spike you don't really have to worry about these flower spikes they look a bit like a little green elfs hat and you just break them off put them in your salad put them in a soup but if you leave them then they might take some of the energy out of your garlic bulb that's developing below ground so your garlic is ready when long shoots start to go yellowy Brown and start to wither and fall back down towards the soil all you no need to do is carefully dig up your hopefully bountiful harvest with a fork and if you're thinking about saving seed be really delicate with those bunches of garlic and put them in a dry cool spot where they can dry out don't leave them lying on the bed if they get rained on then that can cause the fruit to split and the pet and the young skins to start to flake off so take your harvested garlic hang it up in a garden shed or garage and let it dry out before you then place it is that's what you want to do to store it or you just take it straight into the kitchen so that bed is now ready to go if you don't have much space garlic grows really well in containers if you want to find out more about growing garlic and containers things like buckets half barrels or pots check out garlic under the plant guide section of our website