Every October, when the tomato cages are stacked and the beds look tired, I do one last job. It is the job that makes next summer taste better than this one. Planting garlic bulbs is the last sowing of my year and the first harvest I think about in January. It asks for a cold winter, a patch of decent soil, and almost no attention. In return, it gives heads that no supermarket can match. In this guide, I cover the two kinds of garlic, where to buy the cloves, and how to prepare the bed. Above all, I cover the timing, because that matters more than anything else. Then I walk through the actual planting garlic bulbs step by step, the winter mulch, and the spring care. Finally, the harvest, curing, and storage turn a few pounds of cloves into a year of cooking.
Planting Garlic Bulbs at a Glance
| Question | Short answer |
|---|---|
| When to plant | Four to six weeks before the ground freezes, mid to late October in most of the country |
| What to plant | Certified seed garlic, the largest cloves from the largest bulbs, never grocery-store heads |
| Depth and spacing | Pointy end up, 1 to 2 inches of soil over the tip, 4 to 6 inches apart in rows 12 to 18 inches apart |
| Soil | Deep, loose, well drained, rich in organic matter, pH 6.0 to 7.0 |
| Winter cover | 4 to 6 inches of straw or shredded leaves after the first hard freeze |
| Harvest | June or July, when about half the leaves have browned |
| Curing | 2 to 4 weeks in a shaded, airy spot with tops attached |
| Storage | Cool and dry; softneck 8 to 12 months, hardneck 4 to 6 months |
Planting Garlic Bulbs: Hardneck or Softneck?
The first decision comes before you buy anything. Garlic sold for the garden falls into two groups, and they behave differently in the ground and in the pantry.
Hardneck garlic sends up a stiff central stalk in late spring, the scape. It coils and, left alone, would eventually carry a cluster of tiny bulbils. Penn State Extension describes hardneck types as the subspecies ophioscorodon, and notes that removing the scape sends the plant’s energy back into the bulb. Hardnecks give fewer, larger cloves that peel easily, and their flavor is more complex. They are also the hardier group, which is why northern gardeners lean on them. The trade is storage: four to six months, and then they start to soften.
Softneck garlic has no rigid stalk and rarely produces a scape. Its neck stays pliable at harvest, which is why it can be braided. Softnecks carry more cloves per bulb, often in two or three layers, with small ones in the middle. They also store for eight months or more. They prefer milder winters, and they are the garlic you see in stores, the California Early and Late types. Elephant garlic, for the record, is neither one nor the other. It is a leek, Allium ampeloprasum, with a mild flavor and huge cloves.
My own planting is about two-thirds hardneck, for the flavor and the scapes. The other third is softneck, for the heads I want to still be eating in April. If you are new to planting garlic bulbs, try a couple of each type the first year and let your kitchen decide.
Buying Seed Garlic Worth Planting
Garlic is not grown from seed in any practical sense. It is grown from cloves, and each clove is a clone of the parent. That means the quality of the head you plant sets the ceiling on the head you harvest.
Buy certified, disease-free seed garlic from a reputable supplier or a local grower. The University of Maryland Extension is blunt about it: never plant garlic from a grocery store. It may be a symptomless carrier of disease, and it has often been treated to stop it sprouting. Illinois Extension adds another reason: supermarket varieties are bred for shelf life, not for flavor, and seed garlic simply tastes better at harvest.
Choose the largest bulbs you can find and, within each bulb, the largest cloves. Large cloves produce large bulbs, and small cloves produce small ones. It really is that simple, and no amount of care later on changes it. I set the tiny inner cloves of softneck heads aside for the kitchen rather than the bed. Maryland reckons on six or seven bulbs per pound of hardneck seed garlic, with six or seven cloves each. In other words, a pound plants roughly forty cloves. For a family that cooks with garlic most days, two to three pounds of seed is a comfortable start.
Once you have your own crop, save the best heads for replanting. After three or four seasons, a strain adapts to your soil and weather, and the bulbs get noticeably better.
Preparing the Bed for Planting Garlic Bulbs
Garlic wants a deep, loose, well-drained soil with plenty of organic matter. It also wants full sun, at least six hours and ideally eight to ten. It sulks in heavy clay and in any spot that stays wet in winter, where the cloves rot before they root. If your ground is heavy, a raised bed solves the problem; my raised bed soil mix is exactly what garlic likes.
Two or three weeks before planting, loosen the bed a spade deep and work in two to three inches of finished compost. Garlic is a heavy feeder, and most of its feeding comes from organic matter. If you are short on compost, the options in soil amendments fill the gap. A pH between 6.0 and 7.0 suits it, which is the range most vegetable beds already sit in. A quick check with the method in soil pH testing tells you whether you need lime. Fall is the right time to add it, because lime works slowly.
Rotation matters more when planting garlic bulbs than with most crops. Do not plant it where onions, leeks, or garlic grew in the past three years. The soil-borne diseases of the onion family, white rot above all, build up in the ground and persist for years. A fresh bed each fall is the cheapest disease control there is.
Finally, clear the bed of weeds as thoroughly as you can before planting. Garlic has shallow roots and narrow leaves, and it competes badly. A bed that starts clean stays manageable through the whole season.
Timing: When Planting Garlic Bulbs Pays Off
Timing is the part beginners get wrong most often. It is also the part that decides the size of the harvest, so it deserves a section of its own.
Planting garlic bulbs in fall has to give the crop two things. It needs enough time before the ground freezes to grow roots and, ideally, a leaf or two. And it needs a cold period afterward, which is the part no gardener can fake. Maryland Extension explains that cloves must sit at 32 to 50 degrees Fahrenheit for about two months before they can bulb. The bulbing itself is triggered later, by the long days of late spring. Spring-planted garlic misses the chill and cannot grow enough foliage to feed a big bulb, so it produces small heads.
The rule of thumb is to plant four to six weeks before the soil freezes hard. In most of the country, that means mid to late October. Farther north, late September works. Along the Pacific coast and in the mild South, November is fine. Gardeners in the warmest zones may need to chill the cloves in the refrigerator for six to eight weeks before planting garlic bulbs at all. Your first frost date is the anchor: I plant two to three weeks after it, and that rhythm has never failed me.
Planting too early is the more common mistake. Cloves that go in during warm September weather push up tall green shoots that get damaged by winter cold. A little green in November is fine, and hardneck garlic often shows an inch or two. A foot of leaf, on the other hand, is a sign you planted a month too soon. Garlic sits at the very end of my planting schedule for precisely this reason. The fuller context is in the fall vegetable gardening guide.
Planting Garlic Bulbs Step by Step
The job itself takes an hour for a bed that will feed a family for a year. Here is how I go about planting garlic bulbs, in order.
Break the bulbs into cloves on planting day, not before. Illinois Extension notes that cloves separated too early produce smaller bulbs at harvest. Leave the papery skin on each clove, and discard any that are soft, moldy, or damaged.
Mark rows twelve to eighteen inches apart, or lay the bed out on a grid with cloves six inches apart in every direction. I drag a hoe through the loosened soil to make a furrow, which is quicker than digging individual holes.
Set each clove with the flat root end down and the pointed tip up. This matters more for hardnecks, which produce a bent, weaker plant if planted sideways. It matters less for softnecks, but I do it for all of them. Space them four to six inches apart in the row. Closer spacing gives more bulbs; wider spacing gives bigger ones.
Cover the tips with one to two inches of soil in mild climates and two to three inches where winters are severe. Firm the soil gently with the flat of your hand. Then water the bed well, once, to settle the soil around the cloves and start root growth. After that, fall rain usually does the rest.
Label the rows before you leave the bed. By March you will not remember which end held the Music and which held the Inchelium Red, and it matters for what you save.
Mulching After Planting Garlic Bulbs
Once the cloves are in, the bed needs a blanket. Wait until after the first hard freeze, so mice do not move in under the straw while the soil is warm. Then spread four to six inches of clean straw or shredded leaves over the whole bed.
After planting garlic bulbs, the mulch does three jobs. It moderates the freeze-and-thaw cycles that heave shallow cloves out of the ground. It holds moisture through dry winter spells. And in spring it suppresses the weeds that would otherwise outgrow the garlic. Maryland Extension notes that some gardeners pull the mulch back in spring because bare soil warms faster and plants resume growth sooner. I leave mine on in the paths and thin it over the rows, which seems to give both benefits. The full argument for winter cover is in organic garden mulch.
If you live where winters are mild and wet, use a thinner layer, two to three inches, so the bed does not stay soggy.
Spring Care and Scapes
Garlic wakes earlier than almost anything else in the garden. Green tips push through the mulch in March, and from then until June the plant does most of its growing.
Feed it once at green-up with a nitrogen-rich source, such as blood meal or a fish-based fertilizer. Feed again in late April if the leaves look pale. Stop feeding by mid-May, whatever the plants look like. Late nitrogen delays bulbing and makes the heads store badly.
Keep the bed weeded, and do it by hand. The roots are shallow and a hoe swung too enthusiastically will damage them. The mulch does most of the work; the natural weed control methods I use elsewhere handle the rest.
Water when the soil dries out, aiming for about an inch a week from April through early June. Garlic that goes dry in May produces small bulbs. The routine in efficient watering techniques is what I follow. Then, two to three weeks before harvest, stop watering altogether so the bulbs cure in the ground and the outer wrappers dry.
Hardneck varieties send up scapes in late May or June. Cut them when they have made one full curl. Left on, they divert energy from the bulb and reduce its size by a quarter or more. Cut off, they are one of the best things in the kitchen, and harvesting garlic scapes covers how to use them.
Pests, fortunately, are few on this crop. The onion family’s strong smell keeps most insects away, and garlic is a useful neighbor in a vegetable companion planting chart for exactly that reason. Watch for onion maggot, allium leafminer, and, in wet soil, white rot. Rotation prevents most of it, and the tools in organic pest management handle the rest.
Harvesting After Planting Garlic Bulbs
Fall-planted garlic takes 250 to 270 days. That means late June to mid-July for most of us, a little earlier in the South and later in the North. The signal, eight or nine months after planting garlic bulbs, is the foliage. When the lower leaves have browned and about half the leaves overall are still green, the bulb is full-sized and the wrappers are intact. Wait too long and the wrappers split, the cloves separate, and the bulbs will not store. Harvest too early and the bulbs are small and the skins thin. If in doubt, dig one bulb and look at the wrappers.
Loosen the soil with a garden fork a few inches away from the row and lift the whole plant by the base. Never pull by the stem; it tears off and leaves the bulb in the ground. Brush off loose soil gently and do not wash the bulbs. Bruised garlic rots in storage, so treat every bulb like an egg.
Keep the plants out of direct sun from the moment they leave the ground. An hour of July sunshine on a fresh bulb can cook it.
Curing, Storing, and Saving Seed
Curing is what turns a fresh bulb into one that keeps. Lay the plants, tops and roots attached, in a single layer on screens or racks. Alternatively, tie them in bunches of eight to ten and hang them. Either way, the place should be shaded, dry, and airy: a porch, a carport, a shed with the door open. Give them two to four weeks, longer if the weather is humid. The neck is fully dry when you can squeeze it and feel no moisture, and the outer wrappers have gone papery.
Then trim the roots to a quarter inch and cut the tops an inch above the bulb. If you plan to braid softnecks, skip the topping and braid them once the leaves are dry but still flexible. Rub off the outermost dirty wrapper and no more.
Store the cured bulbs somewhere cool and dry, and they will reward you for months. The ideal is 32 to 38 degrees Fahrenheit at around 65 percent humidity. However, a cool basement or pantry at 55 to 65 degrees works well for the home gardener. Do not refrigerate them; the cold and damp trigger sprouting. Mesh bags or open baskets, one or two layers deep, keep the air moving. The same principles I describe in root cellar storage apply here. Softnecks will keep eight to twelve months this way, hardnecks four to six. The onions you cured well by the method in curing onions sit happily on the same shelf.
Before the kitchen gets its share, set aside the biggest, best-formed heads for planting garlic bulbs again in October. That is the whole cycle: the harvest of one year is the seed of the next, and it gets better every time around.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I plant garlic from the grocery store?
You can, and it sometimes grows, but it is a poor bet. Store garlic is often treated to prevent sprouting, and it may carry disease without showing it. It is also usually a softneck bred for shelf life rather than flavor or cold hardiness. Certified seed garlic costs a little more and repays it in the first harvest.
How deep should I plant garlic cloves?
Set the clove so its tip is one to two inches below the surface in mild climates and two to three inches where winters are hard. Deeper planting protects against frost heave; shallower planting suits warm, wet regions where deep cloves might rot.
Can I plant garlic in spring?
You can plant in early spring as soon as the ground can be worked, but expect small bulbs, sometimes single rounds. The cloves miss the winter chill that triggers bulbing. If you must plant in spring, refrigerate the seed cloves for six to eight weeks first. Fall planting is better in every way, and it is less work besides.
Why is my garlic small?
The usual causes are planting too late in fall, small seed cloves, crowded spacing, weed competition, drought in May, or leaving the scapes on hardneck varieties. Late-summer heat in the South can also shorten the season. Fix the spacing, weeding, and watering first; those account for most small crops.
Should I cut the scapes off?
Yes, for hardneck garlic, and it is worth the small effort. Cut them once they have curled fully, usually in June, and you will get noticeably larger bulbs. The scapes are edible and excellent grilled, pickled, or made into pesto.
How long does homegrown garlic keep?
Well-cured softneck garlic stored cool and dry keeps eight to twelve months, so one session of planting garlic bulbs covers the whole year. Hardneck keeps four to six months under the same conditions. Use the hardnecks first and save the softnecks for the late winter and spring.
Check out the author’s book here: The Year-Round Vegetable Garden for Beginners
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