Growing garlic Story and photos by Greg Auton
In my kitchen, garlic is almost as essential as salt and pepper.
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uman beings have been eating garlic for thousands of years, and while many claim that this ancient allium is good for your health, I sincerely doubt that any of us would know a thing about it, were it not for the fact that it enhances the flavour of so many of our favourite foods. Imagine if there were no garlic in your spaghetti, pizza sauce, curry, chili, stir-fry, hummus, guacamole, coq au vin, plov, and so on, and so on, ad infinitum. Suffice it to say, garlic is an essential ingredient in the culinary world, and for us gardeners, this is great news, because nothing could be more easy to plant, grow, harvest and preserve than garlic. Variety There are two main types of garlic: hardneck and softneck. The key difference between the two is that hardneck produce a garlic scape
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(which we will discuss later) and the soft neck do not. I have never grown softneck garlic—and there seems to be fewer cold-hardy varieties of softneck garlic available—so for the purposes of this article I’m limiting the conversation to hardneck garlic. Within the hardneck category there is a wide range of options, from mild to spicy. In my experience, there is more choice to be found by buying them online. Also, it bears mentioning that while many people choose to use grocery store garlic as seed stock because it tends to be inexpensive and readily available, certified seed garlic should be used. This is because certified seed garlic have been harvested and stored with that use in mind so the harvest and yield will be more reliable. There will also be less risk of bringing soil-borne pathogens into your garden, such as white rot, which can persist in your soil Issue 1
for years and make it impossible to successfully grow garlic. When Plant garlic in the fall, sometime after the first frost. Where I live (Nova Scotia) that usually means late September or early October. The trick to optimal timing with garlic is planting them early enough for them to establish roots before the soil freezes, but not so early that they begin to send up shoots and grow. It’s very hard to time this perfectly, but relax, it doesn’t have to be perfect. In my experience it’s better to plant a little too early than a little too late. The fall root development has a meaningful impact on the yield the following spring, whereas there does not seem to be as much of a cost for the clove sending up a shoot in the fall. The shoot will die back over winter (unless your winter is super-mild) but the plant will be localgardener.net
