A Gardeners Forum Forums General Discussion The Food Garden Forum growing garlic

Good Morning! I'm new to growing garlic. Can you give some tips on how to plant and harvist it. Thanks, GlendaJ

I'd like to hear some more on this subject as well. I have bulbs ready to plant, and need advice just like Glenda.

Garlic is best when planted in the fall. I planted some last spring though and got "rounders", just a bulb with no cloves(you can still eat them). I planted more in October, they sprouted about a month later and it has been growing ever since.

This link has some good information about growing garlic: Growing Garlic

I've heard that the cold is what causes the bulb to divide into cloves. Don't know if that is entirely true though. But that may explain why always2shy got rounders.

Thanks "always" the link was great, I'm going to bookmark. Someone gave me a bunch of garlic to plant a month ago so I'm going to go ahead and plant them as soon as I can.

I'm wondering if there's a possibility that the garlic are not as strong when planted in spring as they are when planted in the fall. Does anyone know?

I buy mine from the Produce department at Walmart and it grows just fine. I think every clove I planted last fall has come up.

Hi, its been a while.

However on the splitting garlic, the frost needs to get to the bulb when its in the ground for it to split. If the temperature fails to get down low enough you get no splitting and end up with the 'rounders' , still eatable but not as manageable.

Normally I plant mine in the autumn here in the UK, the lack of frosts this past winter has been a problem however so we'll see what they come out like later in the summer.

In other words, if I plant my garlic this spring (I have to do something with the poor things, they're starting to grow shoots already) I'll probably just get rounders but they will still be .....ah garlic right???? Good for pickling and other recipes.