How to Grow Garlic
Garlic is the king of the kitchen! Often browned in olive oil, it offers the perfect foundation for many kinds of dish, whether Mediterranean, South American, Middle Eastern or Asian. Raw, slightly cooked or roasted to a mash, its flavour is unique and robust.
It shares the culinary throne with its bride, Queen Onion, another vegetable from the same family with similar characteristics. Like the onion, the sought-after and edible part of the garlic plant is the bulb, a conglomerate of many small bulbs, called cloves, wrapped in a white membrane resembling paper.
Garlic bulbs grow underground just below the soil, with a green stalk growing up surrounded by flat, grass-like leaves. These plants are perennials and can be found in the wild with different varieties growing like weeds.
China is the world’s largest producer of garlic, even if most protected varieties are grown in Europe and jealously guarded with certifications like PDO (Protected Designation of Origin). This tells us two things: first, the world cannot get enough of garlic and second, you can grow garlic pretty much at most latitudes.
While it is relatively simple to grow your own, one rule that’s easy to remember – and always adds a romantic sense of ritual to the process – is ‘plant it on the shortest day of the year and harvest it on the longest day of the year’. That means sowing it in mid-June and pulling it out of the ground around Christmas. It’s a months-long affair where you dedicate one patch of your vegetable garden exclusively to the garlic plants, but your patience and devotion will likely be rewarded with a prolific crop.
A garlic clove will develop to a whole garlic bulb! You can plant cloves from garlic purchased from your grocery stores, but chances are they won’t sprout as commercially grown garlic can sometimes be sprayed with anti-fungal preservative chemicals.
Be on the look-out for growth-proof organic garlic bulbs at your local garden centre when the planting season is approaching.
Curing is an important part of growing your own garlic. When ready, dig up the garlic in preparation for curing. This process can vary, but it involves placing or hanging the garlic typically in bunches in a dry place with good circulation (and out of the rain) for a few weeks.
The curing process will preserve the garlic and make it last until the next harvest.
How to grow garlic: tips and tricks
Garlic plants can grow to about 60cm tall. Garlic cloves are a few centimetres long and should be planted with the pointy tip upwards just one or two centimetres below the surface. It is important that these are fresh and are of good quality when first purchased. Garlic can grow in the shade, but the bulbs will be smaller: it prefers the sun.
Tips for Garlic
When buying fresh garlic, pick the bulb up and give it a squeeze. It should be firm. They should also have tight, dry skins and show no sign of sprouting.
Garden friend
Garlic is a great companion plant to many crops as its odorous properties repel pests. Yet it is susceptible to rust infection.
Let’s eat
Roasted garlic is delicious, but you can also eat it raw. The longer you cook it, the more mellow the flavour. It’s the star of so many meals from meat dishes to pasta!
Treat me like royalty
If garlic is the ‘king of the kitchen’, that means you should lavish attention on this relative of the onion when it comes to planting and harvesting the sought-after vegetable. Your months-long wait should pay dividends!
Planting
Your garlic beds should be prepared a few months ahead. Composted manure is the best organic material to enrich the soil. Crowding is acceptable for garlic, so plant cloves every 10cm in all directions.
Water
Light watering should begin as soon as the soil starts to dry around the end of October and beginning of November; don’t wet the stalk as moisture could help the spreading of rust infection.
Harvest
You can harvest when the lower leaves start to turn brown. It is best to dig up the garlic rather than pull it by hand out of the ground. Don’t water in the week or so before the harvest.
Store
You can use ceramic containers specially designed for garlic storage, or mesh bags. Don’t store fresh garlic bulbs in plastic bags. Garlic cloves can also be frozen or stored in wine or vinegar.
