Planting Garlic in the Fall for BIGGEST Bulbs Step-by-Step Guide

do you want to grow garlic how about great garlic I'm going to teach you what my 30 years of growing garlic has taught me Let's Get Growing garlic is absolutely my most favorite fall crop to grow it's pretty easy to grow but I'm going to show you the best way to get the biggest bulbs and the highest yield we're going to go over soil the varieties watering and everything you need to know about garlic plus the right time to harvest garlic loves sun give it your sunny a spot in the garden anytime I've ever planted garlic in partial shade the bulbs have definitely been smaller also when I've interplanted with other crops the size has definitely been smaller as well so keep the weeds out don't inner plant and just keep garlic with garlic garlic definitely can adapt to just about any soil but it will do the best if it has Rich well-drained pH neutral soil that has been well amended with compost for the biggest bulbs you want to get your garlic in two to four weeks before your first hard freeze I usually shoot for the first full moon in October it's just been a tradition for me this way the roots on your garlic get established before winter in milder climates you can plant as late as December or January but you definitely sacrifice the bulb size there are literally hundreds of varieties of garlic and I love them all and I've grown up to 60 varieties in one season but there are three main types you've got your soft neck you got your hard neck and then the elephant garlic soft knit garlic is pretty much what its name says it has a soft neck when it grows it's very flexible and this is the one that you typically see braided so they're beautiful for that there's an average of 16 to 20 cloves per bulb and these are great for beginners because they can grow just about in any climate but these are especially good for those who live in mild climates or maybe even don't freeze soft knit garlic can keep up to a year if it was stored properly and harvested properly hardneck garlic forms its cloves around the main stem the main stem is hard and that's why they call it hard neck and the stem goes all the way through into the root system this isn't one that you would typically see braided but I'm going to put a link below so that you can see a really awesome way to kind of make a resemblance of a garlic braid I think the hardneck varieties of garlic are the best tasting and they have the biggest range they're really mild and just so full of flavor the downside is is they don't keep as long plus they're not really suited for mild climates I've grown a lot of hard neck varieties but over the years they've gotten smaller and smaller because of our mild Winters that we've had so I picked certain ones that have done really well but they have to have that cold temperature in order for them to create cloves and to be a big bowl one of my favorite things about a hardneck garlic is that it produces Escape but we'll talk more about that later so the last one is elephant garlic this is one closed and this is one clove that's a soft nut garlic you see why they call it elephant garlic so this is actually more related to the leek family and it actually takes two years for it to develop so the first year it's just creating a bulb and then the following year it'll create a seed head as well as it'll start to Clove off usually it'll produce about four to six cloves now these are really mild in flavor and a lot of people like them they don't quite have the health benefits as your regular garlic does but they're still really good so elephant garlic will be planted the same way as we do the rest of our garlic only it's going to go about two inches deeper than the rest of it but it's going to have all the same planting requirements watering and fertilization so elephant garlic will also need its space that it can live in for two years this is a step that you could skip if you wanted to but I wouldn't recommend it if you want great big bulbs so the years that I didn't soak my garlic cloves in this solution they were definitely not as big or as healthy for soaking our garlic we're going to need some sort of a little bucket or a jar and put about a quart of water in it and then we're going to need about a tablespoon of baking soda and we're going to add that to it so what the baking soda is going to do is just help with that garlic ever had any type of fungal or bacteria so that that doesn't get passed on we are also going to want to add to that little mix is some liquid kelp so this is going to add some minerals to the clove it's going to soak it up and it's going to help those cloves to plump up a little bit and get their root systems growing a lot faster and the last thing if you can find it is some humic acid so this is a concentrate and I'm going to add one teaspoon to this mix so this is going to help that garlic uptake nutrients and this has really shown the size increase in my bulbs when I've used this now that we got all of our ingredients in that water we're going to just mix it up throw in all of our garlic of one variety if you have more varieties go ahead and make multiple jars of this mixture so we'll let that sit for two hours we'll come back strain it off and we'll get them planted the garlic is soaked for two hours so I'm going to strain it off now so that I can plant it but I don't want to waste the kelp that was in here in the humic acid so I'm going to just go ahead and pour it over some plants you can use this in potted plants or even over your compost pile but don't just waste it let's put it to use once you've picked out your sunny location in your garden and cleared out all the old debris that might have been left from Summer now it's time to add some well-rotted compost and I like to do a layer about two inches thick over this area then I'll take a digging fork and work the soil just a little bit just to loosen that soil because garlic does like that loose soil garlic responds really well to nitrogen and I like to use blood meal you can use other things like feather meals soybean meal cottonseed meal these are a really good organic choices for your organic garlic make sure that you follow the package instructions on whatever fertilizer you use to make sure that you're using enough and not too much so I take my blood meal and I sprinkle it over the surface of the soil that I've already amended and then I just rake it into the top couple of inches of soil that way that garlic will be able to use it right away now that my soil's all prepared nice and loose I like to keep my rows nice and straight and so I'll make little marks with little indentations and I'll just use either a bamboo stick or just a stick that I'm going to use to Mark the row just an indentation so that gives me a guideline of where I'm going to be putting all of my garlic cloves I'm going to State the obvious here but maybe it isn't if you're a beginner but the direction that you plant your garlic cloves is really important because garlic cannot Orient itself very well so we want to make sure that we get it planted properly so there's a point on the garlic and then there's a root end on it so we just come right up to a point and we definitely want that root end going down so you can use a tool called a dibbler like this one here to plant your garlic making little indentations or you can use just a regular stick just pop it in make a hole pop your garlic in there but I find that that's just one more process and I like to get my garlic done fast because we're planting thousands of cloves after all these years of planting garlic I've really found that the fastest method is just to stick it in with my thumb so I'm just holding the garlic clove itself and then I push it down with my thumb up to the second knuckle that way I know it's two inches deep approximately and I can move on really quick as long as your soil is loose this works great when you're planting elephant garlic you're probably going to want to use the dibbler because you're going to want more than two inches of soil above the clove so dig this guy in there deep plop them in there and cover it with four inches of soil as opposed to your other regular garlic make sure that you label your garlic so that you know what variety you've planted especially if you're doing lots of varieties like I do so put your name on it and I like to use these wooden Stakes because they hold up they're big you can see them when the garlic is large and then another tip is use the garden markers because they're UV protectant water resistant and they'll last you the entire season when you don't use these and just use a Sharpie it fades and you might not know what garlic you planted when getting your garlic in the ground space your hard neck and soft necks about four to six inches apart and your elephant garlics about six to eight inches apart and I like to do them in a diagonal pattern like a dice of five so that they can be staggered and you can get more in a smaller area lots more for a small space now that the Garlic's planted we want to make sure we get it watered in we want to keep the soil moist but never soggy this is one of the mistakes that I've made though through the winter time even through the winter you want to keep the soil moist there's been Winters where I didn't water very good and I ended up with really small bulbs so monitor your soil make sure that you've got plenty of moisture in it and if you don't have rainfall definitely water now one of the things we haven't talked about is crop rotation and I'll have to admit I've never rotated my garlic once in the 30 years I always keep it on that North End of my garden because that's the windiest and the garlic seems to tolerate it really well and it kind of acts as a little protection for other crops that don't like that wind so if you ever do run into any problems with your garlic then definitely rotate it move it to another section in your garden for at least a couple of years and then you can rotate back into that section that you originally planted it now another really important step that you don't want to miss especially if you live in a cold environment is mulching mulching will really protect those garlic cloves during the cold winter months so that if it freezes the garlic sometimes just lifts up it's what's called heating up and then that can damage the root system the bulb and everything there's lots of choices of mulches that you can use you can use dried grass clippings you can use shredded leaves you can use pine needles or even straw I don't use straw because we're so windy here it just blows it right off so that doesn't work for me today I'm just going to use the Happy Frog soil conditioner it's just a really fine chip and when it's wet it stays in place that works the best for me in my area you will want to provide nitrogen during Garlic's vegetative growth stage this makes it sure the leaves produce a lot more growth and then you end up with a bigger bulb the healthier the leaves the healthier the stock the more vegetative growth we have the more photosynthesis it gathers and the more energy it pushes down into that bulb so that's why we get the nice big bulbs each garlic Leaf equates one bulb wrapper that remains on after once it's been harvested and the more Bowl droppers the longer the garlic keeps so you can see why it's really important to have a healthy garlic plant garlic can take seven to nine months to fully mature the turbine that I plant is ready in mid-may but certain varieties can come on as late as June July or even August and it also depends on your region so know the garlic that you're planting with all garlic varieties you'll know it's time to harvest when 40 to 50 percent of the leaves start to turn yellow and then Brown then if you're not sure you can kind of dig around in the soil and make sure that you have a nice sized bulb and then it looks like that it has the cloves starting to form about two to three weeks before your hard neck garlic is starting to mature you'll see that it starts to develop what's called Escape essentially it's just a seed head but it'll just be a stalk that comes up with a little seed head on top and generally it's curlicue and you want to harvest that off when it's nice and Curly it's tender that way and you can use it you can saute with it you can cook with it you can make pesto with it there's so many fun things that you can do with those Scapes but if you harvest that off snip it off then that puts more energy into the bulb so you'll definitely have a bigger bulb so that's really an important step not to miss by cutting back the water this helps the garlic to cure a little bit better which definitely makes them store longer now it's time to get that garlic out of the ground we don't want to leave it in the ground too long because if we do then that paper skin starts to deteriorate and we know that that paper skin is what gives us the long-term storage if your soil is nice and loose then you'll be able to pull up the garlic just by the stem but if the stem comes off then you're going to have to get a dig fork or a spade to lift them out of the ground carefully because if that neck comes off then again it's just not going to store very long once you have all of that beautiful garlic harvested we want to cure it properly so you can lay it out on a single layer on some mesh trays or you can hang it in bunches under carport a barn under a tree any of that's going to work just fine in a hot climate like ours you just can't lay that garlic out in the full sun because it will actually bake the top of that garlic and it can ruin a lot believe me I've done this let me know in the comments if you've done that as well if you're planning on braiding your garlic then you can do it within a couple of days of harvest it's dry enough at that point that it's nice and flexible and it's braidable but if you're not going to braid your garlic then let it hang out or sit out for two weeks that way it totally cures and it tastes so much better and then you don't have problems with molds or mildos that can happen now softnet garlics take a little bit longer to cure because of the layering so give them maybe an extra couple of days up to a week once your garlic is cured you're going to want to cut off the tops one to two inches above the bulb and then store it in either netting bags which I like to do or crates that are well ventilated and the best temperatures are between 55 and 65 degrees and you also want your garlic to be stored in low humidity because if the humidity is high you can have your garlic Sprout prematurely if you've ever bought seed garlic before you know it's kind of expensive so this is where you'll want to save your own garlic for planting for the next season pick out your biggest bulbs because those are going to produce bigger bulbs that following here as well the outer bulbs of softnet garlic are definitely bigger and then as you go in towards the center they become smaller I usually plant the larger bulbs and save the smaller ones for cooking or even dehydrating and making garlic powder out of and the life cycle of big garlic bulbs continues see ya hey when are you coming in oh pretty soon I've got less than 1969 garlic cloves to get planted and this one here the dog would like to see you oh [Music]

Channel: Ali's Organic Garden & Homestead

Views: 236,902

Keywords: Growing garlic, growing organic garlic, how deep to plant garlic, garlic, gardening, fall gardening, Planting garlic, Ali's Organics, soft neck garlic, when to harvest garlic, growing garlic at home, planting bulbs, garlic plant care, when to plant garlic, garlic scapes, planting garlic bulbs, how to, hardneck garlic, elephant garlic, how to grow garlic, planting sprouted garlic, growing elephant garlic, best time to plant garlic, how to grow big garlic bulbs

Id: eqklUeAkxes

Length: 15min 17sec (917 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 29 2022