Garlic Planting

Traditionally garlic is planted on the shortest day of the year and then harvested on the longest, a regime I broadly follow. Garlic needs a period of cold weather during the growing season otherwise the individual cloves that we plant will simply grow into one large single bulb rather than dividing into more usable individual cloves. 

So with the 21st scheduled for more important tasks (Christmas tree erecting, mince pie & cookie making, plus a batch of toffee creation) and after a couple of days of dry and warm weather following a deluge last week, the day had arrived.

As ever with most planting jobs, it is the preparation that takes the time. Garlic doesn't need a lot of nutrients to grow but does like a well drained spot, always a challenge with my heavy clay. The best solution is to grow it on/in ridges to try and stop the cloves from rotting.

The bed has been under a mulch of chopped leaves and grass clippings since the tomatillos, courgettes and chillies gave up the ghost in late October, and topped off with black plastic to keep the worst of the wet weather out. The plastic was removed when the rain stopped a few days ago so the first job was to rake back the leaves to soil level. The soil beneath was lovely and light and crumbly. As the leaves break down the worms pull them underground, but inevitably the presence of worms also means moles so the bulk of the work was a quick fork out of all the mole runs in the bed. I've posted before about the conflict between a no-dig approach and the presence of very keen diggers like moles. If they want to eat my worms they'll have to work for their supper and dig some new tunnels!

Bed forked over and raked flat broadly flat, I created the ridges by removing little trenches with an ibis hand hoe and pulling the soil up onto the tops. My beds are 1.5m wide so I planned on 10 cloves per row, seventy in total. 

Assuming they all come up and make good sized heads that don't rot after harest, there should be enough for a year of normal use. And a couple of batches of garlic curry if the crop is spectacular.

I buy garlic for planting - germidour this year - although many people simply use the shop bought culinary stuff (cheaper) or their own saved cloves (much cheaper). This latter is the root I plan to take, because in theory the plants should evolve to my specific growing conditions. But allium leaf miner destroyed one crop and then prevented me from growing it for a couple of seasons. But it looks as if I've found a way around this (insect proof mesh - see this post) so next year I plan to save and plant my own.

To prepare the garlic for planting, gently break the head of garlic apart, separating out the individual cloves. Reject any that are rotten or really tiny - five heads have given me 75 cloves to plant. It is time to plant.

I lay out one row at a time and alternate big and small cloves along the row in the hope that this optimizes the space, assuming the big ones will grow bigger than the small! 

A simple dibber makes a hole and I push the clove gently in to a depth twice the size of the clove. Make sure the flat end, the basal plate, is at the bottom and the pointed end upper most. Gently make sure the clove is covered, and that is about it for now. Hopefully the roots will have anchored the growing plant before the shoot appears otherwise they are irresistible to blackbirds who will pull out the garlic clove and then leave it lying on the surface. If, or rather when this happens, carefully replant the clove by making a new hole and popping it in. Resist the temptation to just force it back in as this may damage the tiny roots.

Remember to label or at least mark the rows as it may be a month before you see any signs of life.

Garlic is very shallow rooted so will need watering in very dry weather and also careful weeding or mulching as it does not do well when fighting for nutrients or water. The main problems for me, apart from those pesky blackbirds, is allium leaf miner, but a very fine mesh will keep the flies out and prevent them laying eggs. And hopefully, by late June, the leaves will be beginning to yellow and it will be time to harvest.

I have also planted five cloves of elephant garlic, a first for me. I'm drawn both to the idea of a potentially perennial garlic, but also one with giant cloves but a mild taste. I'll report on the progress of those in due course.