If you use as much garlic in your cooking as we do, then planting garlic in your vegetable garden is a must! I was taught that the best time to plant garlic is in the fall. Unfortunately, I get so caught up in fall harvest and hunting season that I almost always forget to do this. Just because your garlic did not get put in the ground in the fall doesn’t mean you can’t grow garlic. You still can, it just probably won’t get quite as big as garlic planted in the fall.
Last fall we were moving into our new homestead. I was so focused on moving all my perennial flowers and herbs from our old house to our new house that it never even crossed my mind to plant garlic. There were a few times this winter when I had to go buy garlic at the grocery store and I felt a bit bummed that I didn’t manage to get any garlic planted in the fall.
Then a few days ago, I opened my spice cupboard and green shoots caught my eye on the bottom shelf. The bulb of garlic I bought at the natural food store in town two weeks ago had sprouted. I was thrilled! There were two or three visible green shoots about an inch long. I figured even those two or three garlic sprouts planted in our garden would be better than none.
Today we finally had another warm, blue sky day. While my husband worked on finishing the green house assembly (post coming soon on that project!), Little A and I worked on planting the garlic. Since our new vegetable garden is not fenced or tilled yet, I expanded our herb garden another few feet to accommodate the garlic. Planting garlic right next to the horseradish and chives seemed to be a pretty good spot since they will get full sun.
As I began carefully breaking the bulb of garlic apart, I was thrilled to realize that every single clove of garlic had sprouted! Initially I thought there were a few cloves that did not sprout, but when I carefully peeled back the thin outer skin there was a tiny sprout poking out. Simply amazing!
I planted the cloves about six to eight inches apart to allow ample room to grow. At our old house, our garden space was much smaller so I planted the garlic only a few inches apart. This resulted in very tiny garlic bulbs. So small that it was painstaking to peel them for use. I learned from that lesson and made sure this year there is plenty of space in between the sprouting cloves. I planted the garlic cloves about two to three inches below the soil.
Planting garlic was the first vegetable we planted this spring. While I know our garlic may not produce huge bulbs, I’m thrilled we at least planted some garlic. I’m hopeful that by providing ample spacing between the cloves and it being early enough in the gardening season that we will still grow some decent sized garlic. Our last frost probably won’t be for another two months so we got a little jump start on the gardening season around here!
Do you grow garlic and have any tips to share?
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Do you think if we keep cutting the green sprouts (i love eating them) they would grow anyway?
I don’t know since I’ve actually not cut them before. I’ve heard they’re delicious so I’m going to try them this year! We have a pot of green onions on our kitchen windowsill that we keep cutting the greens and more keep regrowing. I wonder if garlic is the same way?
I was hoping I wasn’t the only one who grew garlic in the spring…people kept telling me that it couldn’t be done! but it sure can!! thanks for sharing!
Yay, another spring garlic grower! Even in our short growing season we can still get decent garlic by planting it in the spring.
I was wondering if there was some special secret to growing it. Mine seem to sprout soon after I buy them. I’ve been freezing them to slow them down!
I hadn’t thought of freezing them! During the winter if my garlic sprouts I just chop up the greens when I chop up the cloves and use it in my cooking.
I always end up with garlic that starts to sprout. I need to plant some!
You should definitely try planting some! They really are quite easy to grow as long as you give them enough space.
I was just thinking about planting my sprouting garlic. I came across this post just in time! Thank you!!!
Glad you found this! Good luck planting your garlic 🙂
I might be mis-remembering, but I think garlic grown from sprouted cloves will be more inclined to go to seed, part of why you’ll get smaller bulbs. Ditto with cutting back the scapes or green parts. When I cut back my beet tops the result is always smaller beets, which of course suits me just fine 🙂
Hi Lisa,
Growing garlic from cloves that were produced in the garden is the easiest way to plant garlic. Yes, it does go to seed, but what you need to do well before the flower head gets too big is cut the flower head (the flower plus the curly stem it’s growing on) and the garlic bulbs will continue to grow nice and plump! 🙂 Matter of fact, the scape (the curly part that the flower grew on) is delicious in recipes, you can even make garlic scape pesto!
I tried to grow garlic for the first time last year and got a late start too. The regular garlic had just started to multiple into cloves when cold weather hit and the growing season was over. It wasn’t usable, but the elephant garlic was even though it was small.
Thanks for sharing this at From The Farm Blog Hop! I’ve pinned this, so now I’m all set for this fall. 🙂 ~ MamaGing.com
I planted some elephant Garlic last year from “grocery store” garlic. I thought I harvested it all before winter, but I must have missed some. Now I have a huge one growing, but I’m not sure when to pull it up.
I’m growing three different kinds of heirloom garlic. It loves our climate!
it is still winter but I’m in Southern California its nice and sunny (small short rain storms ever so often) i was wondering if its okay to plant the garlic i have sprouting in the pantry
Absolutely! I just did two weeks ago when I found a bunch of garlic cloves sprouting in the pantry. I planted them in the dirt floor of our greenhouse and they already started to show some nice green growth!
Plant garlic on Columbus day in fall.. Plant cloves whether they are sprouted or not) a fist width apart from eachother about 3 inches deep. Cover with soil then wait for them to sprout through the soil. The sprouts will look like blades of grass. Cover with straw for the winter. In spring they’ll begin to sprout through the straw again.
Here’s some tips!
1. During the summer when your garlic forms seeds balls on top of stalk, bend them over so nutrients go to bulb not seed ball.
2 in fall when harvesting garlic, you can break apart seed balls and use the tiny seeds and plant them as you would plant a garlic clove although you will get a smaller bulb when harvesting the next year versuses planting an actual clove.. And… When planting garlic, always use the largest clove from the bulb. That determinesthe size of bulb, not the planting space between them.
I am so happy to see this as like you we always seem too busy and forget to plant garlic. Now to find some and get it in the ground!! Thanks for sharing!
Garlic is such a wonderful thing. The bulbs remind me of our universe and the cloves, our galaxy. A student here at the university who is studying botanical genetics has been planting garlic since she was a little girl, first taught by her mother. It’s an immense joy to find that many people in America have a fervor for garden grown garlic as we do here in England. My warmest gratitude to you all. – Stephen Hawking