Planting the Next Crop of Garlic at My Farm
It’s always busy at my Bedford, New York farm. My outdoor grounds crew is working hard to complete our long list of autumn tasks - including planting our next crop of garlic.
Although garlic can be planted in the spring as soon as the ground can be worked, fall planting is recommended for most gardeners. This allows extra time for the bulbs to grow and become more flavorful for the summer harvest. Every year, we plant a lot of garlic from Keene Organics, a family owned farm in Wisconsin that sells certified organic and naturally grown gourmet bulbs for both eating and planting. Garlic is great for cooking and very good for your health. It is well known to lower blood pressure and cholesterol, and carries many antioxidant properties. Knowing that I also grow the garlic myself makes it even more special.
Enjoy these photos!
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- It’s always exciting to get a box from Keene Organics filled with a variety of garlic bulbs for my garden. Each kind is packed in a netted bag, so it can breathe during shipping. https://www.keeneorganics.com
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- When planting garlic, look for the largest most robust bulbs. There are about three bulbs in each netted pack, and each bulb contains approximately five to seven cloves – some even more.
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- Ryan starts by cracking each bulb and separating all the cloves. Do this carefully, so as not to damage any of them. After all of the garlic heads are separated, group the cloves with other similar varieties. For the best results, plant the largest cloves from each bulb and save the smaller ones for eating.
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- Among the many varieties we are planting is Russian Red – a great mild flavored garlic with large fat cloves, which works well as an all-purpose garlic especially in raw dishes, but is also wonderful sautéed and roasted.
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- Leningrad has a very rich, hot, strong garlic flavor. It starts off mild and becomes very strong and robust as it is eaten.
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- Asian Tempest – Asiatic is very hot when eaten raw and sweet when baked. It tastes rich, garlicky, strong, and robust with easy to peel jumbo cloves.
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- Amish Rocambole is robust and very hardy. It grows well in Northern States, and has large impressive bulbs with flavor that’s deep, full bodied, and medium hot.
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- Elephant Garlic is actually a leek that resembles garlic in growing and in appearance. It has a very mild flavor. It is most commonly found in grocery stores.
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- Inchelium Red is a national softneck taste test winner. It’s a mild flavored garlic that’s great baked, roasted, and nicely blended with mashed potatoes.
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- The Romanian Red Porcelain garlic is best for medicinal purposes because it is high in allicin. It is known to be very hot with a tanginess that tends to linger.
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- Spanish Roja is an heirloom garlic whose lineage can be traced to Portland, Oregon over a hundred-years ago. Originally known as Greek or Greek Blue garlic, it grows well in Northern States and marginal in warm winter areas. Spanish Roja has large impressive bulbs and a strong, rich, hot and spicy taste that sets a high standard for garlic flavor.
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- Armenian Porcelain is another heirloom variety. Its cloves are very popular because of their large size and flavor. They are enjoyed raw but they also retain their full-bodied flavor when baked.
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- Transylvanian garlic is the famed artichoke garlic of the Dracula legends. It is an early season flavorful garlic that’s worth trying.
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- Softneck Silverwhite is known for being the longest storing garlic. It has large bulbs and pretty coloring. Silverwhites are flavorful, mild and great when baked and roasted.
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- Chamisol Wild – Rocambole garlics are hardneck, very hardy, large-sized cloves with an earthy sweet flavor – it’s a true heirloom garlic and has grown wild in the Southwest for many years.
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- Purple Glazier – Purple Stripe is an heirloom garlic passed down through generations in the Polish community in Stevens Point, Wisconsin. In the 1980s, it was named Pehoski Purple by John Swenson, a leader and advisor at Seed Savers Exchange. Its taste is intense when raw and gets milder into an earthy garlic flavor when roasted and sautéed.
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- Turban Blossom garlic has large dark purple striped bulbs. It is smooth and mild when baked and crunchy when eaten raw.
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- Bogatyr are huge garlics with a flavor that is even bigger. These are easy to grow and easy to peel.
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- In all, there were more than 25 different garlic varieties. The next step is to prepare them for planting.
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- Ryan mixes a solution of baking soda, water, and fish emulsion.
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- The solution is mixed and placed in a large watering can. Fish emulsion is an organic garden fertilizer that’s made from whole fish or parts of fish. It’s easy to find at garden centers or wherever gardening supplies and fertilizers are sold.
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- Ryan places the garlic in separate larger plastic containers, keeping all the labels near each type for easy identification. Each container is then filled with the solution. Soaking the garlic cloves in fish emulsion gives them a fertilizer boost and rids them of possible diseases, which could have been carried by the garlic.
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- The cloves were all left to soak overnight.
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- The next morning, the containers are emptied and a second soak is done with isopropyl or rubbing alcohol for about 20-minutes. This helps to sterilize the cloves. Hydrogen peroxide or vodka can also be used.
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- Once soaked, Ryan uses a sieve to remove all the liquid. The cloves are left to drain for a few minutes – this process takes a bit of time, but ensures all the liquid is removed.
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- The cloves are returned to their original dry containers. Ryan also creates garden markers listing each garlic variety – they’re ready to be planted.
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- We plant our garlic crop in a bed behind my main greenhouse. Garlic likes loose, loamy and nutrient filled soil. When preparing soil for garlic planting, be sure to add plenty of organic matter, compost, manure and fertilizer.
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- Dawa set out twine to mark where the cloves will be planted and to make sure all the cloves are spaced evenly. Doing this creates straight, pretty rows, but it is also important to give each clove enough room to grow and develop. They should be planted at least several inches from each other.
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- Cloves should be at least two to three inches deep. Be sure to plant the tip of the clove faced up, and the root side faced down.
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- To make the holes for planting garlic, Phurba uses a dibble or a dibber. The T-grip allows him to apply enough pressure to create a consistent depth for each hole.
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- When planting multiple rows of garlic, be sure the rows are at least one-foot apart. The majority of garlic in the US is planted from mid-October through November, several weeks before the ground freezes.
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- The garlic crop will tolerate some shade but prefers full sun. This garlic will be ready to harvest mid-July to August. I can’t wait.
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