I have a clove of garlic that has sprouted and it made me wonder, how do you grow garlic?
Question:It seems redundant to plant a bulb to dig up and eat a bulb. What is the process?
Answers:
garlic is WONDERFUL and easily grown in your garden.
take an individual clove (bulb) and plant it in a sunny and well drained part of your garden, either a veggie garden or even a flower garden. as long as the drainage is good, it gets lots of sun and the soil is good.
late fall or early spring is the best time to plant. some think you should plant the bulbs on the shortest day of the year (21dec).
you basically plant the bulb as deep as it is tall... so if it's 2cm or so tall, plant it 2cm or so deep and also plant around 35cm (or so) apart. plant it point up.
garlic is a wonderful companion plant as it protects nearby plants against some ailments and pests.
another bonus is the goofy, curly stem that shoots up and produces a white flower ball head. it's not too showy but it's graceful and interesting.
as the plant reaches maturity, the leaves will turn brown and die away. this is the time to harvest your new crop. if you do it too soon, the cloves will be very small. if you wait too long, they will be split and woody (they'll start growing new plants from each clove).
once picked, you must dry the garlics out or they will rot. hang the stems up in a dry, cool place for a week or so. after that you can brush off the dry soil.
what's really fun is to buy a head of elephant garlic and watch THAT grow!
cheers!
ps: potatoes are fun too... cut your favourite type of spud into chunks, making sure each piece has an eye or two in it. plant it nice and deep in a very fertile, well drained, sunny place. when the plant that grows from there dies back in the fall, let it dry up and then dig out the potatoes. they grow from the nodes in the roots.
happy harvesting!
I had the exact same thoughts about a potato
seperate the cloves and plant each indivually. each will grow into a completely new bulb...with several cloves.
hope this helps.
Don't use the standard garlic cloves from a grocery store as they've been treated and who knows what else... pick up some from a nursery. Plant them around mid-late October. The bulb mulitplies much like tulip bulbs and are harvested the following year (can't recall when exactly, but before October). I've been planning on trying to grow some myself.
just dig a hole and drop a clove in. if you don't eat them after, you can let them flower. they have a nice flowers, same goes for green onions which have a nice purple flowers.
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