Planting Fall Garlic From Start to Finish

[Music] [Laughter] well hello everyone welcome to another very exciting episode right here on the my gardener Channel I am so glad you got to make it today for today's episode because I am excited we're gonna be planting garlic today and a lot of you have been joining us in this this love of the change of seasons so if you're someplace where it's still hot welcome to Michigan for today's episode it is a balmy 65 degrees still rocking the shirt the short sleeve shirt because it's actually a wonderful change I've been able to come outside and enjoy the garden almost any day almost any hour of the day because it's no longer 90 degrees and 100% humidity which is wonderful so I'm actually kind of glad that the seasons are changing but there is kind of a bittersweet note to that in that it's garlic planting time and that means we've got about 30 to 40 days before our first frost it's just the truth of the matter so we're out here planting garlic today we got about 35 days to learn till our first official frost date or our first official average frost date it could be later it could be sooner but this is when you plant garlic so I've got a bunch of different varieties here and I wanted to make the time really quick to talk about garlic and and the garlic that we're planting so for those of you that have been following us for a while know that we have a seed store you probably know this but if you don't you should probably check it out it's my gardener calm we have over 450 varieties of heirloom and organic non-gmo vegetable seeds for only 99 cents a pack that's right it's incredible but we actually added a brand new item that all of you have been asking for and that is seed garlic so we went out and we locally sourced some organically grown obviously non-gmo heirloom seed garlic this is certified seed garlic it is disease-free it is nematode free and the best thing is the fact that it is incredible heirloom varieties these are not varieties you're gonna get in the store and that is what I absolutely love so I wanted today to come come back here and plant some garlic show you all how we plant it from start to finish but then also let you guys know about the garlic I think it's just really to get good genetics we have on our store we have both hard neck varieties as well as some soft neck varieties a big question you're probably asking is which ones are going to be growing well in my area well the fact of the matter is is that there are two different types of garlic there are hardneck garlic and there are soft neck garlic and the difference between the two is the neck cell on a hard neck variety they have a hard neck and that hard neck extends down throughout the ball and and actually will take up space where normally cloves would be in a soft neck variety you have what's called a artichoke variety this means that cloves will stack on each other much like an art a head of artichoke and you get a you get a lot more cloves per head however soft neck varieties do better in warmer climates they still do great here in Michigan but if you're further north than Michigan if you're in zones 4 or 3 you probably you want to go with a hard neck variety soft necks are good for zones 5 on lower now if you're in a place that's tropical or somebody's that does not get winter conditions I recommend cold stratifying your garlic it's called vernalization and that is the process of actually taking and verna lysing your garlic you what you want to do is you want to take it and stick it in the fridge for about three to four weeks just stick it in the back of the fridge three to four weeks keep it nice and cold a fridge is a wonderful place because it simulates cold weather conditions then all you simply do is break apart the cloves like we'll show you how to do in this episode plant them out like you would normally and you should get average sized cloves they might not be as large but they'll still be really large size for what compared to what you're going to be getting in the store so when it comes to bed prep there's a few things to take into consideration before you plant your garlic and the first question is have you amended your soil we've amended this with compost trifecta plus and some fresh potting mix well not fresh but I'm potting mix to top off the beds that's just simply done because the soil level drops over time and we don't like to waste around here so we threw that in here the other thing that you have to remember is what did you grow in this bed prior so we actually grew alliums in here prior to - the garlic it was our onion bed onions are in the same family as garlic and if you're trying to properly crop rotate this is not something that that you can overlook how we got around the crop rotation because generally you want to move your crops around to prevent things like pests and disease from beginning to sprout up in your soil the way we got around this was by adding in a lot of fresh new compost for a home gardener this is very easy to do or someone growing in containers this is very easy for you to do if you are growing a large scale with acres and you don't have the ability to reimagine your soil and and really revitalize and refresh the soil this is why big farms will tend to crop rotate or market farmers will tend to crop rotate but because we have these beds here they had our onions in there all we did was we added about a full a full a full wheelbarrow full Wow that was a tongue that was a tongue twister we had about a full wheelbarrow full of compost that we sifted out in here and we added about another half a wheelbarrow full of potting mix that we added in here so it's a lot of additional soil that is clean did not have onions growing in it really helps to balance that soil out add good microbial life is in terms of fungus good beneficial fungi and beneficial bacteria so we added a lot of that in and then we also went back and we re fertilized it is so important I can't stress to you how important this is to use a well balanced fertilizer your garlic when you plant your garlic is not going to just introduce our growing it's going to focus on root development first and then it's actually going to focus on dormancy this is why your garlic doesn't just grow super fast right off the bat because if you plant it about 30 to 40 days before your first frost date there's a there's actually a chemical signal that the garlic that all bulbs will that all bulbs will have which is the overwintering stage they actually will stop growth they'll stop your development and they'll actually begin to concentrate energy in the bulbs themselves there not like regular perennials that focus energy in the root system like your fruit trees or your strawberries they'll actually focus energy right into the bulbs themselves onions and the exact same thing as well as shallots so just keep that in mind that you don't want to promote a bunch of root development or foliage development you just want a healthy all-around plant which is why we use a very well balanced fertilizer and we use a just a lot of compost which is just a very well balanced nutritious soil growing medium for the garlic to grow in so with that out of the way let's talk about planting garlic now already site just worked our soil here and by working mean gently incorporated you don't wanna overwork your soil it's never good to overwork your soil because it just ruins the soil structure that you as a gardener work so hard to build I simply want to incorporate that that fresh compost and potting mix into the original soil so that there's not just too two layers that stand out like a sore thumb that first layer of soil has been there the entire season meaning it's decreased a little bit it's compacted a little bit and that's fine to a certain extent compaction is not necessarily an issue if you have the right type of soil but it does get a little harder over time and I like to ensure that it's just a nice homogeneous mixture so the roots don't really notice any difference as they're moving throughout the soil then what I also did is obviously mixed in that fertilizer which helps to just incorporate that and get it into the soil so that the so that it could start working right away so that's all I did just very gently work your soil no need to aggressively till it it's not necessary in a home garden setting what we're gonna be doing is we're gonna be planting out our garlic by type it's very important to do this because it it will reduce headache in the future you see so many car dinners they take all this garlic they don't really care where what goes and that's fine if you don't if you fall into that category as fine but then once things start maturing it gets just completely chaotic you have soft necks at hard necks all intermixed and hard necks will produce scapes which are edible soft next well it's just it's just a mishmash of of everything it's a little too chaotic for my personal preference so I like to take soft necks and plant them in one area and hard necks and plant them in the other area so I'm simply gonna sort them out by hard neck and soft neck varieties and then I'm gonna plant them plant them here now another thing I'm doing I did not do last year is I'm going to be spacing them even closer together this might seem absolutely insane but every year we hone our skills we learn more about our garden space because there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all solution and the spacing that's recommended from from whoever made all the spacing recommendations does not apply to our garden it just does it we can get about three to four times closer spacing than what is recommended because our soil so fertile we are so we're so confident of the nutritional value in our soil and also our garden gets beautiful full Sun and and we can also irrigate if need be we have our cores put in place for the our core gardening method which hold on to moisture better and so our garden is not the same as as their test plot so we're going to we're going to be spacing our garlic every two inches on center that means it's going to get a total of four inches but two inches on center and then we're also going to be doing what's called off-center spacing which is we're going to put a row and you'll see what I'm talking about but we'll put a row and then in the center of each one of those we'll put a garlic clove that's two inches so it'll make almost a triangle in between the garlic cloves again you'll see what I'm talking about already so we're gonna plant our garlic with the pointy tip up and the in indentation facing down we're going to push it in the soil about an inch and a half two inches down we're going to space our garlic out every every two inches on center okay so this is the final part here and then I'm gonna let you guys just plant out the rest this is the last part here that's very important and this is what I'm talking about off-center spacing so you have two garlic cloves here and instead of just doing another row here which you could theoretically do do another row here right you can kind of see what I'm talking about with all of that space being neglected in between so you have some really good wasted space here good quality soil and and good quality space and it's not being utilized so what we're gonna do is we're gonna come back here we're gonna put this right in the center because this way there's 2 inches here 2 inches here 2 inches here and 2 inches here there's perfect spacing it's just so often this Center spot here gets completely neglected and so we're just going to come back here and pop these in the center's and that means we're actually going to get an additional row this is a great way of growing garlic as well as onions and pretty much anything else for that matter if you're growing high intensity really cram them in utilize that space to the best of your ability I mean you got the best quality soil why you know why sell yourself short so I do find it's easy to it's easier sometimes to plant plant out your two rows and then pop it right in the center so it's a little easier to to locate the center between those those rows there already so I'm just gonna go plant up the rest of our garlic but before it's too late I need to end this video so you can go out and plant your own garlic I hope you all enjoyed I hope you learn something new if you have any questions about growing garlic make sure to throw those questions in the comments box below I'll be glad to answer them and also remember to check out my gardener comm where you can check out our five of six varieties that are still in stock of our seed garlic I hope you all will check them out and and get growing some you'll be so glad you did the difference between store-bought and homegrown it's unbelievable not to mention it is so much cheaper so I'll catch y'all on the next episode see you later bye

Channel: MIgardener

Views: 255,936

Rating: 4.8126969 out of 5

Keywords: migardener, Premiere_Elements_2018, heirloom garlic, planting garlic, complete, how to grow garlic, seed garlic, start to finish, fall gardening, garden tip, garlic growing guide

Id: uewBWbBBCKY

Length: 13min 45sec (825 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 25 2018