Saturday, March 12, 2011

Grow your own Garlic!

I thought I would change things up a bit this weekend with the arrival of Spring.  I have a small garden every year that includes tomatoes, kirby cucumbers (for pickles), parsley and zucchini.  This year I'm going to try Garlic.  Now is the time to plant!  It's easy and fun, even if you're not usually much of a gardner.  You also get the reward of eating your home-grown garlic crop!

Garlic is grown from the individual cloves.  Each clove will produce one plant with a single bulb - which may contain up to twenty cloves.

When planting garlic, choose a garden site that gets plenty of sun and where the soil is not too damp.  The cloves should be planted individually, upright and about an inch under the surface.  Plant the cloves about 4 inches apart.  Rows should be about 18 inches apart.

As garlic reaches maturity, the leaves will brown and then die away.  This is the cue that it is time to harvest your garlic crop.  It's important to dry the garlic properly, otherwise it will rot.  The bulbs should be hung up in a cool, dry place.  After a week or so, take them down and gently brush off the dirt.

~Garlic Central

3 comments:

  1. now you bring me back to years ago we always had garlic in our garden with my dad rip, he just loved to grow a garden and the garlic was awesome,he would clean it all and put it in oil... except for a few strands would be hanging in the cold porch in the winter... great memories, thanks for this ...

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  2. Yup, I have a garden each year also. I never grew garlic though. I may have to try that.

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  3. I planted some garlic after seeing your post. Thanks for the tips! Now it's time to wait and see if my thumb is green enough for it to survive our Texas heat. My tomato plants have doubled in size in 2 weeks, so maybe there's hope!

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